Introduction

to how Google
works.
 Introduction
• In its infancy, the Internet wasn’t what you think of when you use it now. In
fact, it was nothing like the web of interconnected sites that has become
one of the greatest business facilitators of our time.

• To find a specific file in that collection, users had to navigate through each
file. Sure, there were shortcuts. If you knew the right people — that would
be the people who knew the exact address of the file you were looking for
— you could go straight to the file. That’s assuming you knew exactly
what you were looking for.
 History of Search Engines
•The whole process made finding files on the Internet a
difficult, time-consuming exercise in patience; but that was
before a student at McGill University in Montreal decided
there had to be an easier way.

•Archie helped solve this data scatter problem by combining a script-based

data gatherer with a regular expression matcher for retrieving file names
matching a user query.
•However, Archie’s search capabilities weren’t as fancy as the natural
language capabilities you find in most common search engines today, but at
the time it got the job done
First Search Engines
• The first real search engine, in the form that we know search
engines today, didn’t come into being until 1993. Developed by
Matthew Gray, it was called Wandex. • Excite—1993
• Wandex was the first program to both index and search the index of • Yahoo!—1994
pages on the Web. This technology was the first program to crawl • Web Crawler —1994
the Web, and later became the basis for all search crawlers. After • Lycos —1994
that, search engines took on a life of their own. From 1993 to 1998, • Infoseek— 1995
the major search engines that you’re probably familiar with today • AltaVista — 1995
were created: • Inktomi—1996
• Ask Jeeves — 1997
• Google —1997
• MSN Search—1998
• Bing — 2009
 Be Aware!!!!
•There are thousands of bloggers and journalists
spreading volumes of information that simply isn't
true. If you followed all the advice about SEO
written on blogs, it's unlikely you would receive top
listings in Google, and there’s a risk you could
damage your site performance and make it difficult
to rank at all.
Exercise
•Go to google.com
•Type : how to pass in exam
•After you did this focus on the results
•How many websites did google find
•How long does it take to find the results .
•Why some websites appeared on Google’s top page while
others appeared on page number 10.
 Anatomy of a Search Engine

•Search engine is a piece of software that uses algorithms to find and collect
information about web pages. The information collected is usually keywords or
phrases that are possible indicators of what is contained on the web page as a
whole, the URL of the page, the code that makes up the page, and links into and out
of the page. That information is then indexed and stored in a database.
•On the front end, the software has a user interface where users enter a search term
— a word or phrase — in an attempt to find specific information. When the user
clicks a search button, an algorithm then examines the information stored in the
back-end database and retrieves links to web pages that appear to match the search
term the user entered.
Anatomy of a Search Engine
1. Query interface
•The query interface is what most people
are familiar with, and it’s probably what
comes to mind when you hear the term
‘‘search engine.’’ The query interface is the
page, or user interface, that users see
when they navigate to a search engine to
enter a search term.
How about Yahoo (portal)
Anatomy of a Search Engine
2. Search engine results pages
•The other sides of the query interface, and the only other parts of a search
engine that’s visible to users, are the search engine results pages
(SERPs). This is the collection of pages that are returned with search
results after a user enters a search term or phrase and clicks the Search
button. This is also where you ultimately want to end up; and the higher
you are in the search results, the more traffic you can expect to generate
from search. Specifically, your goal is to end up on the first page of results
— in the top 10 or 20 results that are returned for a given search term or
phrase.
Anatomy of a Search Engine
2. Search engine results pages
•Based on previous exercise, What’s the first thing you do when the page
appears?
•There is no magic bullet or formula that will garner you those rankings
every time. Instead, it takes hard work and consistent effort to push your
site as high as possible in SERPs. At the risk of sounding repetitive, that’s
the information you’ll find moving forward. There’s a lot of it, though, and to
truly understand how to land good placement in SERPs, you really need to
understand how search engines work. There is much more to them than
what users see.
 Anatomy of a Search Engine
3. Crawlers, spiders, and
robots
• The query interface and search results pages truly are the only parts of
a search engine that the user ever sees.(Front end)
• In fact, what’s in the back end is the most important part of the search
engine, and it’s what determines how you show up in the front end.
• Spiders, crawlers, and robots are programs that literally crawl around
the Web, cataloguing data so that it can be searched. In the most basic
sense, all three programs — crawlers, spiders, and robots — are
essentially the same. They all collect information about each and every
web URL.
 Anatomy of a Search Engine
3.Crawlers, spiders, and robots
• As discussed in the previous slide, that back end of search engine consist
of 3 main parts. Search engine spiders follow links on the web to request
pages that are either not yet indexed or have been updated since they
were last indexed. These pages are crawled and are added to the search
engine index (also known as the catalogue). When you search using a
major search engine you are not actually searching the web, but are
searching a slightly outdated index of content which roughly
represents the content of the web. The third part of a search engine is
Robots which Perform spider and crawlers Actions.
 Anatomy of a Search Engine
3. Crawlers, spiders, and
robots

• •In other words , the robot is able to find the site when the end user type
a word or phrase. This step is called query processor.
• •For more details please watch this video
• •https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVV_93mBfSU
Anatomy of a Search Engine
4. Databases
• Every search engine contains or is connected to a system of databases
where data about each URL on the Web (collected by crawlers, spiders,
or robots) is stored. These databases are massive storage areas that
contain multiple data points about each URL.
• The data might be arranged in any number of different ways and is
ranked according to a method of ranking and retrieval that is usually
proprietary to the company that owns the search engine.
• You’ve probably heard of the method of ranking called PageRank (for
Google) or even the more generic term quality scoring.
• This ranking or scoring determination is one of the most complex and
secretive parts of SEO. Why?
 Anatomy of a Search Engine
4. Databases

• Answer: because search engine companies change

the weight of the elements used to arrive at the score
according to usage patterns on the Web.

• The idea is to score pages based on the quality that

site visitors derive from the page, not only on how
well website designers can manipulate the elements
that make up the quality score
 Anatomy of a Search Engine
4. Databases
Cached web pages on Google
• •Cached pages on Google and what they mean to you. Search results
on Google often come with a “Cached” page version that can be
accessed by clicking the green arrow next to the URL. Clicking
“Cached,” will take you to the version of the page that Google saw when
it last visited the site and indexed its content
Recent Google updates and
how to survive them.

• Keywords are still vitally important in web page ranking. However, they’re just
one of the dozens of considered elements, BUT Keywords are still the most
important elements of SEO.
• Simply put, everybody wants to be in Google. Google is fighting to keep its
search engine relevant and must constantly evolve to continue delivering
relevant results to users.
• This hasn't been without its challenges. Just like keyword stuffing, webmasters
eventually clued onto another way of gaming the system by having the most
'anchor text' pointing to the page. If you are unfamiliar with this term, anchor
text is the text in external links pointing to a page.
Anchor Text Example
 Recent Google updates and how to
survive them.
• Anchor text created another loophole exploited by spammers. In many
cases, well-meaning marketers and business owners used this tactic to
achieve high rankings in the search results.
• Along came a new Google update in 2012, this time called 'Penguin'.
Google’s Penguin update punished sites with suspicious amounts of links
with exact matched anchor text pointing to a page, by completely delisting
sites from the search results.
• Many businesses that relied on search engine traffic lost all of their sales
literally overnight, just because Google believed sites with hundreds of links
containing just one phrase didn't acquire those links naturally
 How to recover from Google
changes, or to prevent being
penalized by new updates
• There are many techniques you should consider it to increase your
website rank on SE. Google says :

• If you want to stay at the top of Google, never rely on one tactic.
• Always ensure your search engine strategies rely on SEO best
practices.
 Authority, trust & relevance. Three
powerful SEO strategies explained.

• Today, Google has well over 200 factors such as

• Google assesses how many links are pointing to • How relevant your page is
your site • How old your site is
• How trustworthy these linking sites are • How fast your site loads
• How many social mentions your brand has

… and the list goes on

 Does this mean it's impossible or
difficult to get top rankings in
Google?
• The answer is Nooooooooooooo.
• Google’s algorithm is complex, but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to
understand how it works.
• In fact, it can be ridiculously simple if you remember just three principles.
With these three principles you can determine why one site ranks higher
than another, or discover what you have to do to push your site higher than
a competitor.
• These three principles summarize what Google are focusing on in their
algorithm now, and are the most powerful strategies SEO professionals are
using to their advantage to gain rankings.
• The three key principles are:
• 1.Trust,
• 2.Authority
• 3.Relevance.
 1. Trust
• Domain names and
• Trust is at the very core of Google’s major changes and updates over
URLs
the past several years. Google wants to keep poor-quality, shoddy
• Page content
sites out of the search results and keep high-quality, legit sites at the
• Link structure
top.
• Usability and
• If your site has high-quality content and backlinks from reputable
accessibility
sources, your site is more likely to be considered a trustworthy source,
• Meta tags
and more likely to rank higher in the search results.
• Page structure
 2. Authority
• Previously the most popular SEO strategy, authority is still powerful,
but now best used in tandem with the other two principles. Authority is
your site’s overall strength in your market.
• Authority is almost a pure numbers game, for example: if your site has
one thousand social media followers and backlinks, and your
competitors only have fifty social media followers and backlinks, you’re
probably going to rank higher.
 3.Relevance
• Google looks at the contextual relevance of a site and rewards
relevant sites with higher rankings. This levels the playing field a bit,
and might explain why a niche site or local business can often rank
higher than a Wikipedia article.
• You can use this to your advantage by bulking out the content of your
site with relevant content, and use the SEO algorithms to give Google
a ‘nudge’ to see that your site is relevant to your market.
• You can rank higher with less links by focusing on building links from
relevant sites. Increasing relevance like this is a powerful strategy and
can lead to a high rankings in competitive areas
 How Google ranks sites now—
Google’s top-10 ranking factors
revealed.

• Fortunately, there are a handful of industry leaders who have figured it out, and
regularly publish their findings on the Internet. With these publications you can
get a working knowledge of what factors Google use to rank sites. These surveys
are typically updated every second year, but these factors don’t change often, so
you can use them to your advantage by knowing which areas to focus on.
 Google’s top-10 ranking factors
• If your competitors’ pages have more of the above than yours, then it's likely they are
going to rank higher. If your pages have more of the above than competitors, then it
is likely you will beat them.
• The mentioned factors are from the Search Metrics Google Ranking Factors study
released in 2015
• •1.Word count.
• 2.Relevant keywords on page.
• 3.Responsive design.
• 4.User signals (click-through-rate, time-on-site, bounce-rate).
• 5.Domain SEO visibility (how strong the domain is in terms of links and authority).
• 6.Site speed.
• 7.Referring domains (number of sites linking to your site).
• 8.Keyword in internal links.
• 9.Content readability.
• 10.Number of images.
 Google’s top-10 ranking factors
(2019)

• 1.A Secure and Accessible Website

• 2.Page Speed (Including Mobile Page Speed)
• 3.Mobile Friendliness
• 4.Domain Age, URL, and Authority
• 5.Optimized Content
• 6.Technical SEO
• 7.User Experience (RankBrain)
• 8.Links
• 9.Social Signals
• 10.Real Business Information
1. A Secure and
Accessible Website
• Unsurprisingly, the first of SEO ranking factors has to do with having
the right kind of URL. Specifically, that’s a URL that Google’s bots can
easily reach and crawl.
• In other words, Google has to be able to visit the URL and look at the
page content to start to understand what that page is about.
• To help the bots out, you’ll need:
• A robots.txt file that tells Google where it can and can’t look for your
site information
• A sitemap, which lists all your pages. If you’re running a website, you
can use an online sitemap generator.
• HTTPS is main a factor in deciding whether or not to index a page,
1. A Secure and
Accessible Website
• How to create a /robots.txt file and Where to put it
• The short answer: in the top-level directory of your web server.
• For example, for "http://www.example.com/shop/index.html, it will
remove the "/shop/index.html", and replace it with "/robots.txt", and will
end up with "http://www.example.com/robots.txt".
 What to put in robots.txt

• The "/robots.txt" file is a text file, with one or more records. Usually
contains a single record looking like this:
• User-agent: [Required, one or more per group] The name of a search
engine robot (web crawler software) that the rule applies to. This is the
first line for any rule. Most Google user-agent names are listed in the
Web Robots Database or in the Google list of user agents. Supports
the asterisk (*) wildcard for a path prefix, suffix, or entire string.
What to put in robots.txt
• # Example 1: Block only Googlebot
• User-agent: Googlebot
• Disallow: /
• # Example 2: Block Googlebot and Adsbot
• User-agent: Googlebot
• User-agent: AdsBot-Google
• Disallow: /
• # Example 3: Block all AdsBot crawlers
• User-agent: *
• Disallow: /
What to put in robots.txt
• Disallow: [At least one or more Disallow or Allow
entries per rule] A directory or page, relative to the root
domain, that should not be crawled by the user agent.

• Allow: [At least one or more Disallow or Allow entries

per rule] A directory or page, relative to the root
domain, that should be crawled by the user agent just
mentioned.
Another example file?in robots.txt
• A robots.txt file consists of one or more groups, each beginning
with a User-agent line that specifies the target of the groups.
• Here is a file with two group; inline comments explain each group:
• # Block googlebot from example.com/directory1/... and
example.com/directory2/...
• # but allow access to directory2/subdirectory1/...
• # All other directories on the site are allowed by default.
• User-agent: googlebot
• Disallow: /directory1/
• Disallow: /directory2/
• Allow: /directory2/subdirectory1/
• # Block the entire site from anothercrawler.
• User-agent: anothercrawler
• Disallow: /
Useful robots.txt rules
2. Page Speed (Including
Mobile Page Speed)
• Page speed has been cited as one of the main SEO ranking factors for
years. Google wants to improve users’ experience of the web, and
fast-loading web pages will definitely do that.
• Google announced a search engine algorithm update focused on
mobile page speed that will start to affect sites from July 2018. If your
site doesn’t load fast on mobile devices, then it could be penalized.
• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). AMP gives web pages a lightning
speed to load on users mobile devices. Faster the speed, higher the
rank and the more chances that users will get to see content in less
time. Apart from improving SERP, fast loading speed will also reduce
Bouncing Rate.
• Use Google’s mobile testing tool to see how your site stacks up.
3. Mobile Friendliness

• While we’re on the subject of mobile, mobile-friendliness is another

major SEO ranking factor. More people use mobile devices than
desktops to access the web, and that’s one reason there’ve been
changes in how Google ranks search results.
• Things to look at include:
• Whether you have a responsive site that automatically resizes to fit the
device Eg. www.m.example.com
• Whether you’re using large fonts for easy readability on a small screen
• Accessibility and navigability, including making it easy to tap menus
• Ensuring that essential content isn’t hidden by ads
4. Domain Age, URL, and
Authority
• Did you know that nearly 60% of the sites that have a top ten Google
search ranking are three years old or more? Data from an Ahrefs study
of two million pages suggests that very few sites less than a year old
achieve that ranking. So if you’ve had your site for a while, and have
optimized it using the tips in this article, that’s already an advantage.
4. Domain Age, URL, and
Authority
• When it comes to search engine ranking factors, authority matters. As
you’ll see, that’s usually a combination of great content (see the next
tip) and off-page SEO signals like inbound links and social shares.
• You can check domain authority or page authority with
https://www.seoreviewtools.com
5. Optimized Content
• Google’s search algorithm relies on keywords. These are the words
and phrases searchers use when they’re looking for information.
They’re also the words and phrases that describe the topics your site
is about. Ideally, those will match up.
• It’s not just about the main keywords either; it’s also important to
include terms related to the main terms people are searching for.
These are called LSI (latent semantic indexing) keywords. They
provide a kind of online word association to help Google know which
results to show.
• For example, using the right LSI keywords will tell Google that when
searchers type in “mini”, your page is relevant to the car, rather than
the skirt, and vice versa.
6. Technical SEO
• We said earlier that getting the code right is one aspect of optimizing
content for better search engine rankings. Here are some of the
aspects you need to look at:
• Use keyword phrases in page titles, which is where Google first looks
to determine which content is relevant to which search. You’ll see the
page title as the first line of a search result entry.
• Use header tags to show content hierarchy. If your title is formatted as
h1, then use h2 or h3 for subheads.
• Create a meta description that both entices readers and includes your
keyword phrase. Keep meta descriptions short and grabby – you have
right around 160 characters to convince searchers that this is the post
they want.
• Use keyword phrases in image alt tags to show how the images are
relevant to the main content. Google also has an image search, which
is another way for people to find your content.
7. User Experience (RankBrain)
• For a while now, Google’s been using artificial intelligence to better
rank web pages. It calls that signal RankBrain. This includes other
signals that affect your search engine ranking. These are:
• Clickthrough rate – the percentage of people who click to visit your site
after an entry comes up in search results
• Bounce rate, especially pogosticking – the number of people who
bounce away again, which basically means your site didn’t give them
what they wanted
• Dwell time – how long they stay on your site after they’ve arrived.
 8. Links
• •As we said at the start, the web is built on links, so naturally, links are
a crucial SEO ranking signal. There are three kinds of links to think
about:
• •Inbound links
• •Outbound links
• •Internal links
 9. Social Signals
• When people share your content on social networks, that’s another
sign that it’s valuable. Cognitive SEO‘s study of 23 million shares
found a definitive link between social shares and search engine
ranking.
10. Real Business Information
• This tip is important for businesses targeting particular local areas.
The presence or absence of business information is one of the most
crucial local SEO ranking factors.