Why Google Delivers More Targeted Results Than Other Search Engines
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Like most of the major search engines, Google assembles the pages in its search
index by using special “searchbot” or crawler software to scour the Web. Found
pages are automatically added to Google’s ever-expanding database; when you
perform a search, you’re actually searching this database of Web pages, not the
Web itself.
The results of your Google searches are ranked according to Google’s trade
marked PageRank technology. This technology measures how many other
pages link to a particular page; the more links to a page, the higher that page
ranks. In addition, PageRank assigns a higher weight to links that come from
higher-ranked pages. So if a page is linked to from a number of high-ranked
pages, that page will itself achieve a higher ranking.
The theory is that the more popular a page is, the higher that page’s ultimate
value. While this sounds a little like a popularity contest (and it is), it’s surpris
ing how often this approach delivers high-quality results.
The number of Web pages indexed by Google is among the largest of all search
engines (Google and AllTheWeb are continually jockeying for “biggest” brag
ging rights), which means you stand a fairly good chance of actually finding
what you were searching for. And the Google search engine is relatively smart;
it analyzes the keywords in your query and recognizes the type of search result
you’re looking for. (For example, if you enter a person’s name and city, it knows
to search its phone book—not the general Web index.)
-------------------------------------------------------------
Like most of the major search engines, Google assembles the pages in its search
index by using special “searchbot” or crawler software to scour the Web. Found
pages are automatically added to Google’s ever-expanding database; when you
perform a search, you’re actually searching this database of Web pages, not the
Web itself.
The results of your Google searches are ranked according to Google’s trade
marked PageRank technology. This technology measures how many other
pages link to a particular page; the more links to a page, the higher that page
ranks. In addition, PageRank assigns a higher weight to links that come from
higher-ranked pages. So if a page is linked to from a number of high-ranked
pages, that page will itself achieve a higher ranking.
The theory is that the more popular a page is, the higher that page’s ultimate
value. While this sounds a little like a popularity contest (and it is), it’s surpris
ing how often this approach delivers high-quality results.
The number of Web pages indexed by Google is among the largest of all search
engines (Google and AllTheWeb are continually jockeying for “biggest” brag
ging rights), which means you stand a fairly good chance of actually finding
what you were searching for. And the Google search engine is relatively smart;
it analyzes the keywords in your query and recognizes the type of search result
you’re looking for. (For example, if you enter a person’s name and city, it knows
to search its phone book—not the general Web index.)