Search engines provide the best matches to a users search query. They rank sites using programs called spiders or robots and return what they consider to be a prioritised listing to any query. Google is the biggest search engine and has over a 70% market share and are very much the focal point for all SEO and paid search campaigns. Google though, was not the first search engine the and actually began quite late. So why did people start using Google? In short, because they delivered the better results to the search queries than the other search engines.

A perfect search engine is one that provides what the user wants quickly. Google developed PageRank™ technology which was revolutionary and has since been copied by many other search engines. Search engines pre Google ran off a small number of large servers which tended to slow under peak loads. Google’s solution was to employ linked PCs producing an efficient search engine thus enabling quick search results, scalability and reduced costs.

Google ranked sites based on two main areas; PageRank™ technology and Hypertext-Matching analysis

Google PageRank™ technology – ranks sites by considering over 500 million variables and 2 billion terms locating websites with a PageRank™ from 1 to 10, 10 being the highest and most likely to be at the top of search results. PageRank™ technology also considers the importance of other sites linking to a site giving a linked page a higher value.

Google’s Hypertext-Matching Analysis – evaluates the content of a website taking into account keywords, fonts, subdivisions, word locations and even the quality of neighboring searching for query specific relevance striving to provide the most relevant and reliable sites first.

Google’s algorithm

Google develops at a rapid rate and their ranking algorithm constantly changes. The have been many notable changes such as the introduction of Google Florida back in 2003, Google Panda in 2009 and most recently, Google Penguin that was released at the end of April. The impacts of these updates can be huge so make sure that you are on top of the changes!