Think for a moment about the sheer wonder of a simple Google search. A question pops into your mind, you go to your computer or your phone, type your query into a box and hit the Search button. In a split second you have thousands of results.
Last year Google averaged more than 5.9 billion searches per day, and understanding what happens when you enter keywords can give you insight into the challenges of improving your own website’s rankings. At Emphasize Design, we want to help you get the most from your website design in Calgary. So, how does it all work? What goes on behind the scenes of a search? This mysterious and “magical” process is complex and fascinating.
Search Begins Before You Hit the Button
Whenever someone creates a web page, publishes a blog post, or even tweets, any time content is added to the web, Google’s “bots” crawls through to scan it and follow links from one page to another. A site’s content is indexed within seconds and then, based on inbound and outbound links, plus a number of other factors, to form an overall estimate of a page’s authority.
Traditionally, search engines relied on how often a search term (or keywords) appeared on a page. Unfortunately, that method yielded unreliable results because it was easy for people “game the system”. Google is attempting to provide real returns with the most useful sites to you. This is referred to as “page authority”.
Most search engine users don’t click past the first page of results, so the work of an expert team who really knows how effective website design in Calgary works can make all the difference. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) will help raise your website’s ranking and attract quality visitors to your business.
Linking is not the only factor. Google checks pages against more than 200 signals, including their PageRank algorithm, which is constantly being refined. Google also asks users to report spam and rate the quality of their searches. All of these elements affect a web page’s rankings.
Delivering Your Results
When you enter a search term on Google, you are actually searching their cache, not the current, active web, and as you have probably noticed, Google will suggest keywords based on what you have typed so far. Your search effectively becomes part of their data. Google uses synonyms to look for similar words to make a part of your search before it creates your initial set of results.
Before you see the outcome, though, several more things need to happen. In order for a website design in Calgary to rank highly, it’s important that Google can crawl and index your site correctly. At Emphasize Design, we specialize in creating professional, highly functional and distinctive sites.
The set of results is sorted by authority and PageRank, and duplicates get removed. Filters are then applied that add or remove content based on what you have searched for in the past, trending topics that are related, and whether or not other types of results (shopping, video, book, or news) might also be relevant.
Other features like “Did you mean” and Google autocomplete are applied to save users time by incorporating common misspellings, plus related and popular searches. These features are also generated using bots that crawl sites and search algorithms. These kinds of predictions are only displayed if Google thinks they will save you time.
Organizing and indexing all the information in the world is a monumental task, and it’s staggering that we can see the results of a search in the blink of an eye. Google transformed searching into something many of us rely on multiple times each day. To help your website design in Calgary rise above the rest, you need a passionate and dedicated team like the experts at Emphasize Design on your side to help you get the most of out of your marketing budget and bring customers right to you.
