How Google Search Works
A deep dive into the three stages of Search: Crawling, Indexing, and Serving.
Stage 1: Crawling (Discovery)
Before you can rank, you must be found. Google uses web crawlers (like Googlebot) to explore the web by following links.
Interactive Crawler
Googlebot starts with known URLs (e.g., from sitemaps or previous crawls).
Googlebot finds pages by following links from already crawled pages.
Sitemaps are like a 'map' you give to Google to help it find your pages faster.
Robots.txt is like a 'Do Not Enter' sign for specific rooms.
Stage 2: Indexing (Organization)
Once a page is found, Google analyzes what's on it. It stores this information in a massive database called the Google Index.
The Indexer (Analysis)
The Canonical Process
Stage 3: Serving (Ranking)
When a user searches, Google scours its index for matching pages and ranks them based on relevance and quality.
The Ranking Algorithm Mixer
Relevance: Does the content answer the user's query?
Quality: Is the information trustworthy and authoritative (EEAT)?
Usability: Does the page load fast and work on mobile?