How Do Search Engines Work ?

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Search Engines uses a complex algorithm to rank web pages.
This algorithm considers various signals from a variety of sources for accurate
ranking of web pages with respect to the search queries entered by the user.
Major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Excite, Ask, Yandex etc
maintain a huge database for the storage of billions of web pages which are
crawled by their bots every day. It is because of this combination of database
and algorithms that we are able to find information easily on the web. Search
engines make use of specialized data centers and larger memories to process
large chunks of data and display the search results within seconds. 
Here is the step by step tutorial on how the search engines
work
?
Step 1

Search Engine bots (spiders) crawl the web searching for
hyperlinks on a web page. The links crawled are stored in a large data base
which may be divided into specific data centers according to the geographic
localization. In this way, search engines continue this process of crawling and
indexing of data.
Step 2

The large chunks of data stored in the database are
processed with the help of high quality processors. These processors are
efficient enough to process billions of web pages and fetch out accurate data
with respect to the search query entered by the user.
Step 3

Now when a user enters a search query, the search engine
matches the query with the available web pages in its database. This searching
is done extremely fast with the help of latest processors. Searching of the
data is done on the basis of an algorithm which is kept a secret.
Step 4
After the data is processed the search engines return links
to web pages which are closely related to the user’s query.
Important Terms
related to Search Engines
Crawler/Robot
These are specialized software which continuously roam the web and crawl the new
hyperlinks which are available.
Indexing
Storing the data according to a specific data structure which helps in
improving the speed of data retrieval.
Hyperlinks- A
Link to another data or resource from the current document. A user browses the
web with the help of hyperlinks.

One Response

  1. Esrat Masum November 16, 2012