Everything You Need to Know About Search Engines

From finding directions to the world of internet marketing, it is safe to say that the internet is utilised in almost every aspect of our lives in the 21st century. After all, our entire lives can be documented online! With this said, the majority of these users do not understand what a search engine is despite the fact that they provide us with all the information we could desire in just a few clicks of a mouse button. Read on as the team here at Internet Marketing Questions take it back to basics and go over everything there is to know about search engines and their importance in marketing…

What is a search engine?

In layman’s terms, a search is a piece of software that can be accessed through the internet in order to search an informational database and find the results that a user is looking for based on their query. In fact, there are a variety of different search engines that internet users have access to including Google, Bing, AOL, Ask.com, Baidu and Yahoo.

How do search engines work?

Although an internet user will only see a single page at a time, it is interesting to know that a search engine is actually made up of millions, if not billions, of different pages that they tend to organise in terms of importance and relevance. In fact, they do this with the help of a variety of different algorithms which analyse each page using a ‘spider’ and then indexes it in terms of content. After this processing is carried out, the page can then be ranked depending on the information it includes, the number of times a specific keyword is repeated and the images, audio and video elements that are imbedded into it.

Do search engines affect internet marketing?

Since a search engine algorithm takes many different components into consideration in order to rank a website in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), it is very common for internet marketing methods to become affected by this process. After all, a low-quality website that utilises black-hat marketing techniques is going to suffer poorly at the hands of these algorithms whereas a high-quality site that provides relevant and original information will finds that the search engine trusts it enough to be displayed favourably in the rankings.

Separating the world wide web from search engines, which are entirely different piece of software, it is important to understand what a search engine is. After all, there are a variety of different options available for internet users to choose from such as Google, Bing and even Yahoo, especially when it comes to optimising for a marketing campaign. In fact, internet marketing methods are often implemented with a specific search engine and its algorithms in mind. To find out more information, get in contact with a member of the IMQ team today!