How does a search engine work?

Google’s algorithm does three things with your website: crawling, indexing, and ranking. This is how the search engine reads the information on your website, organizes it in the database, and determines when your website is shown in the search results.

As a visitor, you enter a few words in the search or address bar that describe what you are looking for, and soon a list of answers appears on your screen. You click on one of the answers and arrive at a website.

The Netherlands’ most important search engine, Google, does this so well that you usually find what you were looking for quickly. 90% of people do not click beyond the first 3 results. It is therefore crucial to be in that top 3, preferably in the first position. But how does a search engine determine which websites appear at the top?

Google’s algorithm does 3 things with your website: crawling, indexing, and ranking.

1. Crawling is the reading of your website by the Googlebot. This crawler only reads HTML to determine what the page is about and looks for links. This way, it maps the content of pages and discovers new pages to crawl.
2. Indexing is the evaluation and inclusion of this information in the Google database. Based on the information you provide to Google, the bot automatically assigns your website a place in the database.
3. Ranking is the evaluation of your page according to the Google algorithm, which determines the position of your website in the search results. Google asks itself: for which search queries does this page provide a good answer?

With SEO, we address these 3 factors with the goal of reaching the top of Google. How do we do that? Read more about it on our online marketing page.