Important Topics:
- How do search engines decide whether a page is a hit?
- How do search engines decide what order to list hits?
- How does the search engine know in what order to list pages?
Hits:
A hit is any page that contains the words that the user inputs for their search. The first 5 hits that appear in the list of pages from the search are the pages that the search engine deem to be the most important and of the most relevance. Often by simply typing in the keywords to be searched i.e. Red Giant the user gets millions of results because the keywords being searched have been given no context, thus the search engines brings up all pages containing these two words (not necessarily together and not necessarily in this order). The user is able to refine the search by giving the keywords some context i.e. Red Giant –software –music, thus reducing the number of results produced by the search engine and making the search more relevant to the individual.
Anchor Text:
Even after giving the search some context, the search engine can still bring up some pages that do not actually contain the keywords in the body of the text. This is because the words are contained within the anchor text. Search engines often use the anchor text to find and display web pages because it assumes that this may give a better description of the page than the actual content contained within the page.
Ranking The Pages:
The pages displayed at the very top of the list are the most important and relevant to the search criteria input by the user. Using Google as an example, the pages are ranked by a system called ‘Page Rank’ which acts similarly to a voting system. Pages gain votes dependant on how many links from other sites they have, each link counting as one vote. If one particular page has lots of links to it from other sites, this page is considered to be of great importance and thus accumulates a high page ranking.
Direct Informatuion
Refining your search on your search engine isn’t just going to give you the information you want instantaneously. You still have to search through the webpage it gives you to find the most important and relevant information to you. Therefore, many webpages now give you the option to site search. This allows you to search the site that you know contains the information you need, thus making finding the required information quicker. In order to this you simply input your keywords or search criteria into the search bar (generally located at the very top of the webpage) and click ‘Go’ or ‘Search’.
