What The Heck Is An Algorithm?

Every search engine is based off of something called an algorithm. An algorithm is just some sort of formula that each search engine uses to figure out web pages and determine how relevant they are, what value they bring, and if they should be included in the search engine results. Search Engines send out crawlers to find all this information. A crawler (also called a robot, or a spider) is just a program that browses all of these web pages for the search engine. In a few cases, some Search Engines are actually powered by live humans that go and do all this work manually. Obviously, you can see the tedious nature of reading all those webpages, taking notes, indexing the page by hand, and adding the results to the search engine! That is a LOT of work.. I guess if you had an infinite number of people, searching an infinite number of pages…. But I digress!

GOOGLE Algorithm Is Key

Google has a comprehensive and highly developed technology, a straightforward interface and a wide-ranging array of search tools to enable the users to easily access a variety of information online.

Google users can browse the web and find information in various languages, retrieve maps, stock quotes and read news, search for a long lost friend using the phonebook listings available on Google for all of US cities and basically surf the 3 billion odd web pages on the internet!

Google boasts of having the world’s largest archive of  Usenet messages, dating all the way back to 1981. Google’s technology can be accessed from any conventional desktop PC as well as from various wireless  platforms such as WAP and i-mode phones, handheld devices and other such Internet equipped gadgets.

Page Rank Based On Popularity

The web search technology offered by Google is often the technology of choice of the world’s leading portals and websites. It has also benefited the advertisers with its unique advertising program that does not hamper the web surfing experience of its users but still brings revenues to the advertisers.

When you search for a particular keyword most of the search engines return a list of pages in order of the number of times the keyword or phrase appears on the website. Google web search technology involves the use of its indigenously designed Page Rank Technology and hypertext matching analysis which makes several instantaneous calculations undertaken without any human intervention. Google’s structural design also expands simultaneously as the internet expands.

Page Rank technology involves the use of an equation which comprises millions of variables and terms and determines a factual measurement of the significance of web pages and is calculated by solving an equation of 500 million variables and more than 3 billion terms.

Unlike some other search engines, Google does not calculate links, but utilizes the extensive link structure of the web as an organizational tool. When the link to a Page, let’s say Page B is clicked from Page A, then that click is attributed as a vote towards Page B on behalf of Page A.

Back Links Are Considered Popularity Votes

Quintessentially, Google calculates the importance of a page by the number of such votes it receives. Not only that, Google also assesses the importance of the pages that are involved in the voting process. Consequently, pages that are themselves ahead in ranking and are important in that way also help to make other pages important. One thing to note here is that Google’s technology does not involve human intervention in anyway and uses the inherent intelligence of the internet and its resources to determine the ranking and importance of any page.

Hypertext-Matching Analysis

Unlike its conventional counterparts, Google is a search engine which is hypertext-based. This means that it analyzes all the contents on each web page and factors in fonts, subdivisions, and the exact positions of all terms on the page. Not only that, Google also evaluates the content of its nearest web pages. This policy of not disregarding any subject matter pays off in the end and enables Google to return results that are closest to user queries.

Google has a very simple 3-step procedure in handling a query submitted in its search box:

1. When the query is submitted and the enter key is pressed, the web server sends the query to the index servers. Index server is exactly what its name suggests. It consists of an index much like the index of a book which displays where the particular page containing the queried term is located in the entire book.
2. After this, the query proceeds to the doc servers, and these servers actually retrieve the stored documents. Page descriptions or “snippets” are then generated to suitably describe each search result.
3. These results are then returned to the user in less than a one second! (Normally.) Approximately once a month, Google updates their index by recalculating the Page Ranks of each of the web pages that they have crawled. The period during the update is known as the Google Dance.