How do search engines work?

If you could imagine the internet as a massive library housing millions of websites, made up of billions of web pages. Search engines act as the most proficient librarians you have ever met - seleting specific websites according to your specific search query. They also happen to have unbelievable memories - remembering the most relevant websites / web pages according to common search queries, creating very thorough indices of these results. 

Essentially, search engines are the key to finding specific information on the vast expanse of the internet. Without sophisticated search engines, it would be virtually impossible to locate anything on the web without knowing a specific website address (URL).

Search engines perform three basic tasks that make our lives a whole lot simpler:

• They search the internet -- or select pieces of the internet -- based on important words
• They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them.
• They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index. 

Google search bots, also known as "spiders" view your web pages in HTML format - which basically means when they crawl the internet all they see is words, and the positioning of those words on a specific page. This is why content and the right amount of it is very important to good SEO practices. 

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