Many people wonder how search engines really work. Although the details are complex, this article aims to give you some insight into the process without getting too technical. Read on...
Most search engines have three parts: a crawler, an index, and a search interface. Let's look at each part individually, to get a better understanding of them. Each part has its own role to play in the process, with all the parts working together to make searches possible.
The Crawler - Also known as a 'spider' or 'bot', this part of the search engine wanders the web, following links and picking up information for its database. Crawlers do most of their work at times of the day when search engines are less busy, but they typically visit frequently updated pages more often.
This is something to keep in mind when you're working on your pages. As you may want to perform updates locally and update them when they have been finished rather than updating bits and pieces and hoping that the search engine runs into the correct version.
Also, crawlers ignore some things: your site's code, for example. Your site's title and text - your 'content' - is the most important thing to a crawler. The fastest way to raise your site's search engine ranking for specific key words is to implement them into your title and your content.
