Explaining Search Engines

By Tyler Downer
2/9/08

Finding what you need

Search Engines have become an essential part of the Internet. They are the main way that information is found. While almost everyone has used one at some point or another, many people don't know what makes a Search Engine go, or what happens to their search after they press Enter. For an example, let us examine a typical Google search.

The Life of a Search

For a typical search, you go to the engines main page, like www.google.com. From there, you enter the string that you would like to search. After you press enter, a long chain of events begins. Your request, called a query, is sent to the search engines database, hosted on it's servers. These databases are filled with millions of links, keywords, and descriptions. All of the links that contain words that are in your query, or have words that are similar, are then put in a page, then sent back to your computer. The position of each page on the listing is calculated by a complicated series of mathematical equations. Web developers fight to get in the top 10 results, because they are the ones that most people will see. You typically see the finished results in less than 2 seconds.

Spiders, or Bots

But where do the spiders, or web bots that we keep hearing so much about some into a search? The database os web sites that a search engine uses to build the results pages is built by people submitting their web sites to the engine, and by spiders. Spiders are small programs that follow every link that they can find, "index" that link, and send a copy of it to the servers. These bots are usually the main way that large search engines get the links to build their databases. Search Engines that use Spiders include Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and AskJeeves.

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