Search engines are a type of computer program that is used to collect and organize content from all over the Internet. They also use a complex algorithm to answer user queries and deliver the results that are most relevant to them.

There are many different kinds of search engines and each one is designed to do something specific. It is important to understand which type of search engine you need for your business and how it works.

Crawling and Indexing

A search engine uses ‘crawlers’ to go from web page to web page, collecting information about each of them and then putting that information in a database. The information consists of the text, links and pictures that make up each page. This process is called ‘crawling’ and is the first step in creating the massive databases that search engines use to provide the results for their searches.

The search engine uses a variety of algorithms to determine which pages should appear in response to a query and what order they should be displayed in. These algorithms are constantly being developed and updated to improve the quality of the results that the search engine delivers to its users.

Topic Modeling

When a person uses the search engine, they give it a word or phrase that they are looking for. The engine will then look for web pages that contain this word or phrase. The engine will then use a number of other factors, such as the quality of the content and whether it is helpful to the person making the search, to decide which pages should appear in response to that word or phrase.

This is an extremely complicated process and requires the use of a lot of different software programs that analyze each piece of information that is provided by the searcher. These software programs help the search engine sort through hundreds of thousands of pages that it might find in response to a given term.

It is therefore vital to make sure that the words and phrases you use are relevant to what you are trying to do, as this will greatly influence how relevant the search result will be. Often, it is worth using a thesaurus to come up with synonyms or other terms that can be used in place of the term you are looking for.

Exact or Explicit Phrase Search

A very effective method of ensuring that you only receive relevant results is to use the exact or explicit phrase search function. This is usually the best choice if you are looking for something specific and would like to avoid seeing the more common but less relevant results that are found by a general keyword search.

You can also exclude certain keywords by adding a minus symbol to the end of the search phrase. For example, if you were searching for “Joe Bloggs” and didn’t want to see results with the name Joe Bloggs but only results with the brand name Bloggs, you could exclude these words by adding the -jeans suffix.