How Do Search Engines Work?
Explaining how search engines work could take dozens of pages. The process of creating efficient computer search engines is anything but simple. To clarify what these search engines do we might simply view them as instructions or directions that tell the computer what to do.
In fact, this is the definition of a computer algorithm. Search engines are computer algorithms that help us locate information among the millions of sources around the world. One of the first things that beginners hear from a reliable computer instructor is that computers are a collection of plastic, metal and glass that won’t do anything unless we tell it what to do.
We have to create and use a computer program that gives the computer instructions in simple, clear steps. Then this “box” and its internal parts follow the instructions exactly to get to the objective. In essence, we use search-engine programs to tell the computer what to look for and how to go about looking for it.
One of the key words in this area of computer knowledge is “sort.” Depending on what you have to look for you might sort among a handful of values or keywords or you might sort among millions. Search engines start this process by creating a limited database from the Internet.
In fact, the first search engines used a couple of decades ago followed certain keywords in a way similar to how we use the index of a book. As technology improved and computer programming was fine-tuned, search engines begin to look for and sort text on individual pages. Obviously, this expanded our ability to find details almost beyond imagination.
What makes current search engines so efficient is that the instructions make sure that the program indexes information so that it isn’t necessary to search all the sources on the Internet each time. In most instances, the search program only has to go to a certain indexed category or particular section of the data storage. Much of the irrelevant information has already been set aside or ignored.
Efficiency is greatly improved because search engines “crawl” the Internet occasionally to update their databases. This maintenance activity makes our searches happen much more quickly. Programmers have created what many call “spiders” or “robots” that do the crawling, sometimes every other day or once a week, for example.
Most people who use the Internet and search engines on a regular basis know about keywords and search-engine optimization (SEO). This occurs because, as the spider/robot makes its way around the millions of pages of information on servers around the world, it records not only the information itself, it records how many times individual words and phrases appear. Of course, if the word, phrase or topic appears on many, many pages the search engine considers that word or phrase to be very important. Thus they are placed on our search results according to popularity and frequency of use.
While each search engine assigns values differently (weighting) they all perform this essential task, making our computer use more rewarding.
Category: Technology