Google, Bing, Yahoo, and many more. Search engines are our answers to everything. If we have a question or want to search for something immediately, then we turn to our very reliable and dependent search engines. They help in discovering and organizing the internet’s content for offering relevant results to the queries the users are asking for. And every company needs its website on the first page of the search engines in order to drive traffic or boost sales.

Furthermore, if you wish your content to show up on top, the content needs to be visible to search engines. If your site is not found, there is no way your content will show up in SERPs. And in today’s digital era where almost 92% of the world population uses smartphones, it becomes evidently necessary that you need your website in the first few searches.

In today’s blog, we are going to explore the working of search engines. So, let us begin.

How do Search Engines Work?

To begin with, understanding how a search engine works is not that complicated. Basically, every search engine has an algorithm that makes it more user-friendly and customer-centric. Other than that, every search engine works via three primary functions which are as follows:

  • Crawling

Bots go through the internet for content looking for relevant texts, images, videos, documents or any other form of information for each URL which they come across.

  • Indexing

It stores and organizes the content that is found during the crawling process. Once any webpage is in the index, it will be considered to be displayed as a result when a relevant query comes. It looks like normal indexing, but for the internet. Here, the URLs are all sorted according to the set algorithm of a particular search engine.

  • Ranking

The search results are placed in the order of the most relevant information to the least in response to the query. Here, targeted keywords play a vital role which we will discuss in detail later.

What Is Search Engine Crawling?

Crawling can be considered as a discovery process where the search engine sends out crawlers/ spiders for finding updated content. The content can vary in the form of a webpage, video, image, PDF, etc. Irrespective of the format of the content, it is discovered by the web crawler tool.

Google bot begins by fetching a few webpages and follows the links on these webpages for finding new URLs. By hopping along the path of links, website crawler software finds new content and adds it to the index known as caffeine which is a huge database of discovered URLs. These can be retrieved when a searcher is looking for information on which content on that URL matches with.

What Is a Search Engine Index?

Search engine processes and store information which they find an index which is the massive database of all content that they have discovered and found good enough for the searchers.

Search Engine Ranking

When an individual performs a search, the online web crawler tools explore the index of the relevant content and rank the content for solving the query of the user. Placing the relevant in order is known as ranking. It can be said that the higher a website gets ranked; the search engine believes it to be more relevant for the query.

It is possible to block web crawlers from finding websites for certain reasons. But if web pages want their content to be found by web crawler tools , the content should be accessible.

Can Search Engines Find Your Pages?

As mentioned above, to get your website crawled by website crawler software, it is important to show up in the SERPs. If you have a website, you need to start by checking how many pages of yours are in the index. This will help in finding if the online web crawler tools is crawling and finding all pages that you want it to and not crawling the ones that you don’t want it to!

If you wish to check your indexed pages, site: yourdomain.com can help. Type it in the Google search bar. The numbers displayed by Google might not be accurate but it gives you a fair idea of which pages are indexed and how they are shown in the search results. Furthermore, you can get a good idea about your website ranking for a certain keyword.

Tell Search Engine How To Crawl Your Site

If you found out that some of your significant pages are not crawled by web crawler software tools and have not been indexed, or unimportant pages have been indexed mistakenly, you can implement some optimization for directing web crawler tool about how you want your content to be crawled. Telling the website crawler software what you wish to be crawled offers you a better control of what gets stored in the index. WebDataGuru offers a wide range of web solutions like crawling, data extraction and the like.

Can Crawlers Find All Your Important Content?

Sometimes website crawler software is able to find some parts of your website but other parts might be left obscured. It is important to ensure that all of your content is indexed by the online web crawler tool, and not just your homepage. This means you must have an updated website with relevant and ample content. Every page has significance according to the search engines.

Avoid these mistakes to keep web crawler software tools from seeing your entire website:

  • Mobile navigation shows different results than desktop navigation.
  • Nonrelevant keywords are highlighted on the website.
  • To make sure that anything gets found, understood, and indexed by the web crawler tool, put it in HTML.
  • Personalization of the navigation for a specific user can seem cloaking to website crawler software.
  • Not linking the primary page on your website through your navigation. After all, links are the pathway for an online web crawler tool for finding new pages.

Therefore, your website must have clear navigation as well as a URL folder structure. Now, why this is important? Basically, search engines are utilized by many individuals of different age groups. So, easily accessible content and a good website will ensure more traffic and lesser bounce rates, thereby making your website rank higher.

How Search Engine Interpret And Store Your Pages?

Once you are sure that the site has been crawled by a web crawler software tool, you need to ensure it is indexed. Just because it was crawled doesn’t mean it was indexed. Yes, there is a huge difference. Every website that is crawled for information may not be captured by the search engine. It seems complicated, but it really is not. Let us explain that in detail.

Tell Search Engine How To Index Your Site

Meta directives are the instructions given to web crawler tool regarding how you want the webpage to be treated. The instructions will be executed via Robots Meta Tags in the <head> of HTML pages or with X-Robots Tag in the HTTP header.

How Search Engines Rank URL

Search engines make sure you receive a relevant answer for a query. User must get the best information in very less time. And you get a list of 9-10 URLs on the first page of the search and then many more on the later pages. This order of search results is known as ranking.

As mentioned earlier, search engines use unique algorithms for deciding the relevance. Algorithms have changed over the years for improving the quality of search. For instance, Google changes its algorithm every few months and sometimes every few weeks. The main reason for changing the algorithm is to make the search quality better.

Search engines want useful answers to users’ questions in a helpful and comprehensive format. It is to be known that links play a crucial role in SEO. Search engines require help to figure out which URLs are more trustworthy than others so that they can rank the search results. Even backlinks help as they work as word of mouth.

One doesn’t need to know the details of Google’s algorithm as that is still a mystery! However, you should have a basic knowledge of how search engines find, store, and rank content. This knowledge can help in growing your page by choosing right the keywords for your content.

Sprint with Web Crawler Tool

Making a lasting impression with a website is important and appearing on search engines makes it more viable. A web crawler will help you achieve this and much more without any doubt. Make your business sprint towards success with the web crawler tool.

Now, you know the benefits of a web crawler tool. Making this advancement could mean creating the best opportunity for your business. WebDataGuru is one of the best in the business providing varied web data solutions to companies across the globe. So, you know where to come when you need distinctive services with assured benefits. So, get in touch with us today to get a detailed discussion or you can also Place an Inquiry!