When you search for something on Google, you expect to get a list of sites that provide you with the most relevant information available. But how does Google determine which sites contain the most relevant information to your search and how does it rank them? The answer is Google’s algorithms.

What Does a Search-Engine Algorithm Do?

Without getting too technical, search-engine algorithms essentially hone in on the most relevant content by looking through different websites. These algorithms are looking for specific criteria, like key words, to determine if the content of the webpage is relevant to the search. It then ranks the pages based on that information.

It is also important to note that search-engine algorithms do more than just rank pages based on how closely they match what is being searched for. Their complex design also enables them to find the pages that provide answers to the original question (provided the search term was a question).

Search-engine algorithms are pretty complicated, and different search engines use different algorithms, which is why you don’t get the same results when you search for the same thing on different sites. The specific details of each algorithm are also a tightly kept secret. However, there are some general facts that are known about search engines, and we use this information to optimize your sites.

Updates and Changes to Algorithms

Companies like Google are constantly making small changes to their algorithms in order to improve them. Most of these changes are small tweaks, but there are times when major changes are made. Google does give information on some of the major changes they make.

In fact, 2018 marked a huge change – Google announced that it is rolling out mobile-first indexing. Prior to this change, Google’s algorithms would use the information they gathered from crawling desktop sites to rank websites. A lot of desktop sites are extremely different from their mobile equivalents, which caused a bit of frustration for people using search engines on their mobile device. Now, the mobile version of the site will be used to index and rank pages.

How Do I Keep Up?

While it can be hard to keep up with all these changes in order to make sure your website is optimized for each iteration of Google’s algorithms, we can help make it easier for you to understand how to approach these changes.

Make sure to keep reading the NKP Medical blog. Next month, we will go over the details of Google’s mobile-first indexing and what changes you’ll need to make to ensure the success of your website.