{"id":16550,"date":"2026-09-02T11:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T08:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/how-search-works\/"},"modified":"2026-09-06T00:50:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T21:50:57","slug":"how-search-works","status":"publish","type":"ar_kb","link":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/how-search-works\/","title":{"rendered":"In-depth guide to how Google Search works"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"video-wrapper\" style=\"margin-top: 20px;\">\n<\/div>\n<p>\n  Google Search is a fully-automated search engine that uses software known as web crawlers that<br \/>\n  explore the web regularly to find pages to add to our index. In fact, the vast majority of<br \/>\n  pages listed in our results aren&#8217;t manually submitted for inclusion, but are found and added<br \/>\n  automatically when our web crawlers explore the web. This document explains the stages of how<br \/>\n  Search works in the context of your website. Having this base knowledge can help you fix<br \/>\n  crawling issues, get your pages indexed, and learn how to optimize how your site appears in<br \/>\n  Google Search.\n<\/p>\n<aside class=\"note\">\n  Looking for something less technical? Check out our<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search\/howsearchworks\/\" class=\"external-link\">How Search Works site<\/a>,<br \/>\n  which explains how Search works from a searcher&#8217;s perspective.<br \/>\n<\/aside>\n<h2 id=\"a-few-notes-before-we-get-started\" tabindex=\"-1\">A few notes before we get started<\/h2>\n<p>\n  Before we get into the details of how Search works, it&#8217;s important to note that Google doesn&#8217;t<br \/>\n  accept payment to crawl a site more frequently, or rank it higher. If anyone tells you<br \/>\n  otherwise, they&#8217;re wrong.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Google doesn&#8217;t guarantee that it will crawl, index, or serve your page, even if your page<br \/>\n  follows the <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/search-essentials-overview\/\">Google Search Essentials<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"introducing-the-three-stages-of-google-search\" tabindex=\"-1\">Introducing the three stages of Google Search<\/h2>\n<p>Google Search works in three stages, and not all pages make it through each stage:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"#crawling\"><strong>Crawling:<\/strong><\/a> Google downloads text, images, and videos<br \/>\n    from pages it found on the internet with automated programs called crawlers.\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"#indexing\"><strong>Indexing:<\/strong><\/a> Google analyzes the text, images, and<br \/>\n    video files on the page, and stores the information in the Google index, which is a large<br \/>\n    database.\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"#serving\"><strong>Serving search results:<\/strong><\/a> When a user searches on<br \/>\n    Google, Google returns information that&#8217;s relevant to the user&#8217;s query.\n  <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<h2 id=\"crawling\" tabindex=\"-1\">Crawling<\/h2>\n<p>\n  The first stage is finding out what pages exist on the web. There isn&#8217;t a central registry of<br \/>\n  all web pages, so Google must constantly look for new and updated pages and add them to its<br \/>\n  list of known pages. This process is called &#8220;URL discovery&#8221;. Some pages are known because<br \/>\n  Google has already visited them. Other pages are discovered when Google extracts a link from a<br \/>\n  known page to a new page: for example, a hub page, such as a category page, links to a new<br \/>\n  blog post. Still other pages are discovered when you submit a list of pages (a<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/sitemaps-overview\/\">sitemap<\/a>) for Google to crawl.\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-wrapper\">\n<\/div>\n<p>\n  Once Google discovers a page&#8217;s URL, it may visit (or &#8220;crawl&#8221;) the page to find out what&#8217;s on<br \/>\n  it. We use a huge set of computers to crawl billions of pages on the web. The program that<br \/>\n  does the fetching is called <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/googlebot\/\">Googlebot<\/a><br \/>\n  (also known as a crawler, robot, bot, or spider). Googlebot uses an algorithmic process to<br \/>\n  determine which sites to crawl, how often, and how many pages to fetch from each site.<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/google-crawlers\/\">Google&#8217;s crawlers<\/a><br \/>\n  are also programmed such that they try not to crawl the site too fast to avoid overloading it.<br \/>\n  This mechanism is based on the responses of the site (for example,<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/how-http-status-codes-affect-googles-crawlers\/#http-status-codes\">HTTP 500 errors mean &#8220;slow down&#8221;<\/a>).\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  However, Googlebot doesn&#8217;t crawl all the pages it discovered. Some pages may be<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/robots-txt-syntax\/#disallow\">disallowed for crawling<\/a> by the<br \/>\n  site owner, other pages may not be accessible without logging in to the site.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  During the crawl, Google renders the page and<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/javascript-seo-basics\/#how-googlebot-processes-javascript\">runs any JavaScript it finds<\/a><br \/>\n  using a recent version of<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/chrome\/\" class=\"external-link\">Chrome<\/a>, similar to how your<br \/>\n  browser renders pages you visit. Rendering is important because websites often rely on<br \/>\n  JavaScript to bring content to the page, and without rendering Google might not see that<br \/>\n  content.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Crawling depends on whether Google&#8217;s crawlers can access the site. Some common issues with<br \/>\n  Googlebot accessing sites include:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/how-http-status-codes-affect-googles-crawlers\/#http-status-codes\">Problems with the server handling the site<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/debug-network-and-dns-errors-for-googles-crawlers\/\">Network issues<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/robots-txt-intro\/\">robots.txt rules preventing Googlebot&#8217;s access to the page<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 id=\"indexing\" tabindex=\"-1\">Indexing<\/h2>\n<p>\n  After a page is crawled, Google tries to understand what the page is about. This stage is<br \/>\n  called indexing and it includes processing and analyzing the textual content and key content<br \/>\n  tags and attributes, such as<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/title-links\/\"><code>&lt;title&gt;<\/code> elements<\/a><br \/>\n  and alt attributes,<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/images-best-practices\/\">images<\/a>,<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/video-search\/\">videos<\/a>, and<br \/>\n  more.\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-wrapper\">\n<\/div>\n<p>\n  During the indexing process, Google determines if a page is a<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/specify-canonical\/\">duplicate of another page on the internet or canonical<\/a>.<br \/>\n  The canonical is the page that may be shown in search results. To select the canonical, we<br \/>\n  first group together (also known as clustering) the pages that we found on the internet that<br \/>\n  have similar content, and then we select the one that&#8217;s most representative of the group. The<br \/>\n  other pages in the group are alternate versions that may be served in different contexts, like<br \/>\n  if the user is searching from a mobile device or they&#8217;re looking for a very specific page from<br \/>\n  that cluster.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Google also collects signals about the canonical page and its contents, which may be used in<br \/>\n  the next stage, where we serve the page in search results. Some signals include the language<br \/>\n  of the page, the country the content is local to, and the usability of the page.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  The collected information about the canonical page and its cluster may be stored in the Google<br \/>\n  index, a large database hosted on thousands of computers. Indexing isn&#8217;t guaranteed; not every<br \/>\n  page that Google processes will be indexed.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Indexing also depends on the content of the page and its metadata. Some common indexing issues<br \/>\n  can include:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/search-essentials-overview\/\">The quality of the content on page is low<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/block-search-indexing-with-noindex\/\"><span>Robots<\/span> <code>meta<\/code> rules disallow indexing<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/javascript-seo-basics\/\">The design of the website might make indexing difficult<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2 id=\"serving\" tabindex=\"-1\">Serving search results<\/h2>\n<aside class=\"note\">\n  Google doesn&#8217;t accept payment to rank pages higher, and ranking is done programmatically.<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/search\/howsearchworks\/our-approach\/ads-on-search\/\" class=\"external-link\">Learn more about ads on Google Search<\/a>.<br \/>\n<\/aside>\n<p>\n  When a user enters a query, our machines search the index for matching pages and return the<br \/>\n  results we believe are the highest quality and most relevant to the user&#8217;s query. Relevancy is<br \/>\n  determined by hundreds of factors, which could include information such as the user&#8217;s<br \/>\n  location, language, and device (desktop or phone). For example, searching for &#8220;bicycle repair<br \/>\n  shops&#8221; would show different results to a user in Paris than it would to a user in Hong Kong.\n<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-wrapper\">\n<\/div>\n<p>\n  Based on the user&#8217;s query the search features that appear on the search results page also<br \/>\n  change. For example, searching for &#8220;bicycle repair shops&#8221; will likely show local results and<br \/>\n  no <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/visual-elements-gallery-of-google-search\/#image-result\">image results<\/a>,<br \/>\n  however searching for &#8220;modern bicycle&#8221; is more likely to show image results, but not local<br \/>\n  results. You can explore the most common UI elements of Google web search in our<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/visual-elements-gallery-of-google-search\/\">Visual Element gallery<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Search Console might tell you that a page is indexed, but you don&#8217;t see it in search results.<br \/>\n  This might be because:\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/seo-starter-guide\/#expect-search-terms\">The content on the page is irrelevant to users&#8217; queries<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/search-essentials-overview\/\">The quality of the content is low<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<li>\n    <a href=\"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/google-bilgi-bankasi\/block-search-indexing-with-noindex\/\"><span>Robots<\/span> <code>meta<\/code> rules prevent serving<\/a>\n  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\n  While this guide explains how Search works, we are always working on improving our algorithms.<br \/>\n  You can keep track of these changes by following the<br \/>\n  <a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/search\/blog\">Google Search Central blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Get an in-depth understanding of how Google Search works and improve your site for Google&#8217;s crawling, indexing, and ranking processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"menu_order":6,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"ar_kb_kategori":[695],"ar_kb_etiket":[532,530,536],"class_list":["post-16550","ar_kb","type-ar_kb","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","ar_kb_kategori-seo-fundamentals-documentation","ar_kb_etiket-crawling","ar_kb_etiket-indexing","ar_kb_etiket-ranking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb\/16550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/ar_kb"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb\/16550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25593,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb\/16550\/revisions\/25593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"ar_kb_kategori","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb_kategori?post=16550"},{"taxonomy":"ar_kb_etiket","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alienroad.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ar_kb_etiket?post=16550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}