How do search engines actually work?
S earch engines utilize advanced mechanisms to locate, catalog, and categorize web content to allow users to access information as fast as possible. The entire operation is divided into three stages: crawling, indexing, and ranking. 1. Crawling Crawling entails using automated programs called web crawlers or spiders by search engines such as google to scan and walk through the pages available over the world wide web. These crawlers explore the web page links which contain new material including texts, images, and videos. The crawlers work on a known collection of Websites first and then work on the hyperlinks to other pages from these. They refresh pages on a frequent basis in order to search for alterations or modifications. There are exceptions to the amount of content that is crawled. For instance, pages that are log-in protected or which have no index tag are not crawled. 2. Indexing Indexing is the stage after a certain page gets its turn to be crawled. The contents of thi...