What Is An Internet Search Engine? How Do Search Engines Work?

The very name “Internet search engine” tells us about the function of this tool on the web. Its task is to collect as many websites as possible, i.e., index them, and then issue its recommendations to users. Thanks to them, today’s Internet users can search for symptoms of diseases on the Internet, buy shoes, and expand their knowledge in any field. Of course, the first place in search engines belongs to Google, which is why we would like to devote the most attention to this search engine.

Times before Google

The Mountain View giant was absolutely not the precursor of the web search itself. Before its creation, there were such services as, for example, the well-known and still operating Yahoo. Unfortunately, these search engines had to give up the Google field because their algorithms, responsible for finding the right content for the user, were easy to manipulate. They were mainly based on keywords in the text and the “meta” tag in the page’s source code. Pages that cared about a large number of views entered there various popular phrases entered by the search engine and appeared in the first places of the rankings, completely not matching the information that the web user wanted to get. Porn sites were in the lead.

How Google Revolutionized Internet Search

The algorithm, invented by the creators of Google – PageRank, turned out to be a breakthrough in the development of search engines. Its innovativeness has improved the quality of internet searches. How has it worked and works so far? Namely, Mr. Page and Mr. Brin compared websites to scientific papers. Thus, the most credible and valuable is the one that is cited by many people and the one that is cited by authorities in a given field. Transferring this to the Internet, the first on the search list were those pages that were linked to as many links from other pages as possible while linking from a page that itself had a high PR position meant much more than linking from a little-known source.

Typing the words PageRank in the search engine, most of the results will suggest to us that this algorithm “died” or meant nothing. These opinions are a slight misunderstanding and may mislead people outside the SEO industry, so here’s an explanation of the issue.

PageRank gave the websites a score. The higher it was, the higher the constant page, and the links that led from it were more reliable and built a higher score for the linked page. Google introduced a toolbar tool where anyone could see the current value for a given page. It was very important for people who dealt with the positioning of websites in search engines because it answered, in a way, whether they were doing their job well. Unfortunately, it also led to abuses by people who promoted the websites where content mattered the least.

The basic way was to insert worthless pages with just any text but links to the pages we wanted to promote. Then such a site with a lot of links (high PR) is linked to others, giving better results as a trusted source. For this reason, Google has disabled this tool, no longer allowing external viewing of algorithm results but keeping its algorithm as one of the search criteria.

Further algorithms

Search is constantly evolving. Over time, algorithms to combat unfair positioning practices have been introduced, and the most famous of them are Panda and Penguin. They protect great content on the Internet, stigmatizing pages that copy texts. They are artificially created to position pages designed to fill authors’ wallets with advertising money without giving users anything. This fight continues to this day, and to this day, updates are being made to the tools as mentioned above.

In addition, pages are promoted that have a clear layout, are updated frequently, and, above all, are rich in content that identifies them with the purposes for which they were created. The search engine can now find information not only on the basis of keywords, but even entire phrases, using variation by cases, as well as by examining the surroundings of these words and, as it were, guessing the intentions that guided us during the search. The Koliber algorithm is responsible for this. For example, by entering the phrase “tire replacement,” Google will not only find a specialist who does it, not only brands and manufacturers that should interest us but also articles with tips on when to change them, prompting us to consider whether we should actually do this at this stage of tire wear.

The exact operation of the search engine algorithms

By countering people who do not care about improving the quality of information online, who spread disinformation and litter the Internet, Google does not provide details of how search engines work. We learn about them from the scraps of information that the creators spend in statements and interviews, as well as checking how the pages we positioned behave after the update to the algorithms. Moreover, the website is not so eager to inform us if any changes have actually been made. The only effective way to get online is to repeat the mantra of Page and Brin to focus primarily on publishing great content.

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