Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Companys Web Site [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

Figure 2-1. Types of search results. The Google search results page clearly separates paid from organic results; other search engines combine them.

indexing. Indexing is the process that creates a search index, a special database that holds a list of all the words on all the pages on the Web. Later in this chapter, we explain how the organic indexing process works. For now, just be aware that a lot of the magic of organic search engines occurs long before anyone enters anything to search.

Without yet knowing how the search index is created, you can still learn how the organic search engine uses that index when search words are entered. At the moment that words are typed into Google, the search engine does three major things, as shown in Figure 2-2:

Matches the search query.
The search engine must analyze the words the searcher typed in and pick the pages that match those words.

Ranks the matches.
Most search queries return many matches, so the search engine must sort the matches so that the best ones are at the top.

Displays the search results.
After the best matches are chosen, the search engine displays them on the screen for the searcher to see.