Google Search: what it is and how it works
No longer just “a” search engine, Google has become the very synonym for the action of “searching” online. Every day, billions of users, whether they need to find information, resolve doubts or make decisions, as a first impulse type or voice their queries on Google Search, convinced or at least hoping to get useful answers in a split second. But what exactly happens in this minimal time? How does Google Search work and what are the secrets that govern the world’s most famous algorithm? So let us try to analyze in a simple, yet in-depth way how the Google Search system works, focusing in particular on all the indications regarding how Google discovers web pages, crawls them and publishes them, but also on what all this means for sites and for SEO.
What Google Search is
Google Search is an advanced, automated search engine developed by Google LLC, which allows users to search online and find information on billions of web pages.
More precisely, it is the most widely used search engine in the world: launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, over the years it has become one of the essential tools for navigating and finding information on the web, thanks largely to the precision and speed of its algorithm, that is, the complex set of rules, formulas, and equations that underlie (and make possible) these operations.
From a technical point of view, Google handles billions of users and queries every day, and provides tailored results that combine both organic content and paid ads. Its operation relies on a complex system of algorithms and machine learning models , including technologies such as RankBrain, BERT and MUM, to examine, catalog and rank online resources based on their relevance and reliability. Google Search scans the web through processes of crawling, indexing and ranking, ensuring that results are relevant to the user’s search intent.
How Google’s search engine works
Before delving into the more technical aspects, we can dwell further on the general explanation of what Google Search is.
All we see, in fact, is a minimalist interface – in the standard version, a simple white page with a search box in which to enter our input – which, however, hides a complex system, honed by years of innovation and powered by state-of-the-art technology, where artificial intelligence plays a crucial role.
The primary mission of Google Search is explicit: to organize the immense amount of data available in the world and make it accessible and useful to anyone. The basic concept is very simple: to enable users to find answers to their questions, from the simplest concepts to the most complex searches, which are provided in special and evolved SERPs, an acronym for Search Engine Result Page.
This is what makes Google Search fundamental for those who work with digital and especially for those involved in SEO: any strategy to increase the visibility of a website inevitably passes through the study of how Google indexes and ranks information. However, it is not enough just to be on Google: understanding what Google Search is, in fact, also means understanding what makes it so efficient in responding to our queries and, at the same time, finding directions for optimizing our pages to reach the top positions.
In fact, Google does not simply track and catalog the pages available online, but responds by selecting results based on their relevance and reliability. All this is done through complex algorithms that constantly evolve and determine which pages deserve a higher position in its SERPs. This is why we digital marketers must necessarily understand the dynamics that drive this mechanism, so as to maximize our ranking and the resulting organic traffic.
What Google Search is for.
Search engines are the digital version of a librarian and help users get the appropriate answers and information for their query and need by plumbing the full index of results they have available.
Thus, search engines are answer machines, searchable databases of Web content, and exist to discover, understand, and organize Web content to deliver the most relevant results to the questions posed by users.
Broadly speaking, search engines are composed of two main parts: a search index (representing the digital library of information about Web pages) and search algorithms, i.e., computer programs charged with comparing the results of the Search Index to identify the most appropriate ones based on the rules provided.
Google Search or Google Search is exactly that: a fully automated search engine that uses software, called web crawlers, to regularly explore the Web and find pages to add to its Index. As reiterated frequently, the mission of Google and its search system is “to organize information from around the world and make it globally accessible and useful,” and this requires continuous work to continually map the Web and other sources to enable each user to access the information that the algorithms deem most relevant and useful, using as a compass the criteria we usually refer to as 200 ranking factors on Google. The results are then presented in various ways in SERPs, based on what is most appropriate for the type of information that specific person is looking for.
The differences between organic search and ads
A relevant clarification needs to be made, however: Google offers two main routes to gain visibility in its SERPs, through organic placements, which do not incur direct costs, and through paid ads, managed through the Google Ads platform .
Understanding the difference between organic and paid results on Google Search is crucial for anyone who wants to maximize their online presence, either as a business or as an SEO expert.
Organic results are those that Google shows naturally, based on its ranking algorithm. These results are ranked based on factors such as relevance of the page to the searched keywords, quality of the content, and a number of technical and authority parameters.
On the other hand, paid ads (Google Ads) fall under the so-called SEA and are an immediate way to appear at the top of the results, but with one major difference: here it is not the “quality” of the site that counts, but rather the budget that the advertiser is willing to invest to gain visibility. Their position is linked to an auction system , in which companies pay every time a user clicks on the ad (cost per click or CPC). However, even in this case the relevance of the ad to the user’s query is not entirely set aside: in fact, Google assigns a quality score (Quality Score) that can influence the cost and visibility of the ad. Thus, advertisers who properly optimize ads can also achieve better rankings while spending less.
Google organic search, however, remains a valuable target for long-term strategies. Unlike paid ads, organic results often provide more trust to visitors, who tend to perceive them as “deserved” and not influenced by advertising logic. This does not imply that Google Ads are ineffective or useless, on the contrary: they can be an extremely useful strategy when you want to gain immediate visibility, launch a new product or service or compete in very competitive industries where organic placement takes longer. However, in the long run, achieving and maintaining a good organic search engine ranking is one of the most coveted goals, as it can lead to consistent visits and qualify the site as authoritative and trustworthy.
From a brand-building perspective, neither option should necessarily be ruled out in advance, and the choice between organic and paid results often depends on short- and long-term goals. Google Ads campaigns help us gain immediate visibility and quick conversions, but they lack the sustainability that distinguishes a well-executed SEO strategy, capable of delivering lasting results over time without the need to continually invest advertising budgets.
Google’s statistics and numbers
Google then made its official debut in 1997 and rather quickly established itself as “the” search engine on the Web: it is currently the most visited site in the world (for several years) and is so popular that its name (or a derivative) has become synonymous with online search itself in several languages, as evidenced by the English verb to google, the German googeln and the Italian googlare.
The numbers help us understand the dominance of this giant in the search engine market: as of September 2024, Statcounter certifies that Google holds about 90.5 percent of the entire worldwide reference marketshare, relegating the main competitors to residual shares (the second ranked engine is Bing, which does not reach 4 percent of users).
Speaking of figures and statistics, then, impressive are the data revealing the amount of work the search engine does every moment – which also ties in more or less directly with the extent of its Index. Specifically, in 2023 Internet Live Stats (when it was still working) counted that Google processed nearly 100 thousand searches every single second, and thus over 8.5 billion searches per day and over 3.1 trillion on an annual basis.
According to Siteefy, as of April 21, 2023, Google contained about 25 billion web pages in its index, while World Wide Web Size Project believes that the estimated number of web pages indexed in Google is about 50 billion, and on an absolute level there would be about 3.23 trillion websites in the world (although 82% of them results inactive!).
Why it is important to know how Search works
So, every time we enter a query in the search box Google starts analyzing thousands, sometimes millions, of web pages or other content that might be an accurate and relevant match to our original intention and, thanks to its systems, tries to present the most useful information in response to what we have asked it for.
Other numbers make us realize the value of this huge system: according to BrightEdge, 68 percent of all online experiences start with a search engine, and organic searches are responsible for 53.3 percent of all website traffic.
To be able to intercept organic traffic, however, we need to be visible, and only by understanding the basics of search and Google Search can we succeed in making our content detectable to users, but also by crawlers: the first piece of the SEO puzzle is in fact making sure that content is first of all visible to search engines, because a site that cannot be found and read by crawlers will never be able to appear in SERPs and be clicked on by people.
Also on a general level, then, it is worth remembering and keeping in mind two key points related to presence on Google:
- Even if we follow all the official basic directions and guidelines of Google Search, Google does not guarantee that it will crawl the page, index it, or publish it.
- Despite what you may read out there, Google does not accept payment for crawling a particular site more frequently or improving its ranking, nor is there any link between organic ranking and spending on search engine advertising.
Then there is another aspect that we should not overlook: ranking is not “eternal,” and not only because “Panta rei” as Heraclitus put it : in addition to the inevitable changes in technologies, possible changes in search intent, and changes in the context (e.g., the emergence of new competitors or optimizations of other sites), it is the search engine itself that is constantly changing.
Some small updates are practically invisible to users, while others – Google’s famous algorithmic updates, such as Google Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird – have a direct impact on the ranking of sites, even with drastic effects on whole swaths of organizations that see their pages rise or fall in terms of visibility.
And then there are them, the long-awaited and dreaded broad core updates, which are periodic “tune-ups” of the machine that drives the search engine. This is because the Big G team is always working to incrementally refine the efficiency of the search engine and ensure that users always find the most useful and reliable answers.
In this sense, it is still the numbers that clarify for us the amount of such interventions, and in 2022 alone, more than 800,000 experiments were made official, leading to more than 4,000 improvements to Search (values that continue to grow, as verified by comparing with data on changes in 2020).
To be precise, as seen in the graphic below, there were:
- 4725 launches (i.e., changes actually implemented at the end of a rigorous review process by Google’s most experienced engineers and data scientists).
- 13,280 experiments with real-time traffic (to assess whether user engagement with respect to the new feature is positive and will be useful for everyone).
- 894,660 search quality tests (with the work of quality raters, who do not directly affect ranking, but help Google set quality standards for results and maintain a high level of quality worldwide).
- 72,367 side-by-side experiments (a kind of A/B testing with two different sets of search results, to figure out which one is preferred between the one with the expected change and the “classic” one).
In short, Search is not a static service and therefore acquiring some basic knowledge can help us to keep up with and solve any crawling problems, get pages indexed and find out how to optimize the appearance and presence of our site in Google Search-which is then the ultimate goal of SEO, starting from an intuitive assumption: the better Google understands the site, the better match provided to those searching for that kind of content and answers.
How does Google work as a search engine? The three stages of the process
How Google Search works is the result of the interaction of countless automated processes. What appears to us as a simple search bar actually represents the end point of a huge infrastructure of servers, bots, and algorithms working in synergy to provide the best answer to each query entered. But how exactly does all this work?
At the heart of the process are three main steps: crawling, indexing and ranking, which in a nutshell represent the search, discovery and evaluation of pages. Whenever we start a Google search, these three steps define whether or not a web page is successful in appearing among the results, because not all pages pass these checks.
- Crawling. Through automated programs called crawlers or spiders, such as Googlebot, Google downloads text, images and videosfrom pages found on the Internet. It is from this first step that Google “discovers” the pages and adds them to its vast index. As mentioned, not all scanned pages will be indexed, but only those that Google deems valuable are retained for potential future queries.
- Indexing. Google analyzes the text, images, and video files on the page and stores the information in the Google Index, its large database. Google’s search index “is like a library, but it contains more information than all the libraries in the worldput together” and is continually expanded and updated with data on web pages, images, books, videos, facts, and more. This process allows Google not only to catalog pages, but to recognize their content, identify relevant keywords, and link content to specific search intentions.
- Publishing search results. When a user performs searches on Google Search, algorithms return information relevant to their query in a split second: results are presented in various ways, based on what is most useful for the type of information the person is actually looking for. This is the ranking phase , the one that is of most interest to those working to improve their SEO. Once a page has been indexed, Google assigns a relevance value based on a number of criteria and then makes the crucial decisions about which pages deserve to be shown at the top-and in what order-when a particular topic is searched.
This process, which is much more complex than we can see externally, underlies a continuous updating of Google Search‘s algorithms. It is not enough, therefore, to optimize a site once in order to appear and stay ranked: it is necessary to constantly monitor changes and adapt, using tools such as SEOZoom , for example, to check the site’s performance and understand where action can be taken.
Crawling, the page retrieval phase
The first phase is called crawling and is used to figure out what pages exist on the Web: as the search engine’s official documentation explains, there is no central registry of all web pages, so Google has to constantly look for new and updated pages and add them to its list of known pages, doing what is called “URL discovery.”
Much of the work is done by software known as crawlers (but also robots, bots or spiders), which automatically visit publicly accessible web pages and follow the links on those pages, just as a user browsing content on the Web does; crawlers scan billions of pages on the Web by a huge amount of computers, moving from page to page and storing information about what they find on those pages and other publicly accessible content in the Google Search index. As the paper adds, most of the pages reported in the results are not manually submitted for inclusion, but are found and added automatically just as the web crawlers explore the web.
Some pages are known because Google has already visited them, others are discovered when Google follows a link that redirects from a known page to a new one-for example, a hub page (such as a category page) that redirects to a new blog post-and still others are discovered by sending Google a Sitemap, or list of pages for crawling.
When Google finds the URL address of a page, it may visit – technically “crawl” – the page to discover its contents and perform the retrieval operation . Specifically, Googlebot uses an algorithmic process to determine which sites to crawl, how often to do so, and how many pages to retrieve from each site to avoid overloading it with too many requests. The crawl rate and crawl demand data (the amount and frequency of crawl requests, respectively) form the crawl budget value, i.e., the number of URLs that Googlebot can and wants to crawl, which can be a relevant element in improving the ranking opportunities of our most strategic pages.
During crawling, Google displays the page and executes any JavaScript code detected using a recent version of Chrome, similar to how the browser displays the page we visit. Rendering is important because websites often rely on JavaScript to display content on the page, and without rendering, Google may not see this content.
In any case, Googlebot does not scan all the pages it has detected: some resources may not be authorized for scanning by the site owner, and others may not be accessible without being logged into the site. Specifically, there are at least three common problems with Googlebot accessing sites that prevent crawling:
- Problems with the server running the site
- Network problems
- Rules in the robots.txt file that prevent Googlebot from accessing the page
Content authors and site owners/operators can help Google better crawl their pages by using the reports contained in Search Console or through the aforementioned established standard services, such as Sitemaps or the robots.txt file, which specify how often crawlers should visit content or possibly exclude certain pages and resources from the search index.
Basically, there are various reasons why we may want to block search engine crawlers from part or all of the site or instruct search engines to avoid storing certain pages in their index. However, if we want our content to be found by Search users, it is crucial to make it accessible to crawlers and indexable, otherwise our site risks being virtually invisible.
Technical details about crawling
Continuing with the library metaphor, according to Lizzy Harvey crawling is “like reading all the books in the library.” Before search engines can show any search results, in fact, they have to retrieve as much information from the Web as possible, and for that they use a crawler, a program that travels from site to site and acts like a browser.
The crawlers attempt to retrieve each URL to determine the status of the document and ensure that only publicly accessible documents enter the index: if a book or document is missing or damaged, the crawler cannot read it; if, on the other hand, the resource returns an error status code, the crawlers cannot use any of its contents and may retry the URL at a later time.
Specifically, if crawlers discover a redirect status code (such as 301 or 302), they follow the redirect to a new URL and continue there; when they get a positive response, a sign that they have found a user-accessible document, they check whether it is allowed to crawl and then download the content.
This check includes the HTML and any content mentioned in the HTML, such as images, videos, or JavaScript. The crawlers also extract links from HTML documents to also visit linked URLs since, as we said before, following links is how crawlers find new pages on the Web. Speaking of links, in older versions of Google’s document there was an explicit reference to the fact that “links within advertisements, links for which you have paid on other sites, links in comments, and other links that do not comply with the Guidelines are not followed”-now gone, although almost certainly the way it works has remained the same.
It is important to know, however, that crawlers do not actively click on links or buttons, but send URLs to a queue to be crawled at a later time; also, when a new URL is accessed, there are no cookies, service workers, or local storage (such as IndexedDB).
Indexing, the phase of organizing data and information
After finding a web page, crawlers analyze its content, trying to figure out what it is about and organizing Google’s collection of information: this is the phase called indexing, in which crawlers view the page content as the browser would and take note of key signals, including by processing and analyzing text content and key content tags and attributes, such as <title> elements and ALT attributes, images, videos, and more.
This is the actual cataloging and storage of information in Google’s vast index and is a decisive step in the mechanism of Google search, because here the search engine decides which pages to store, organize, and-most importantly-propose later to users based on specific queries.
The Google Search index contains hundreds of billions of web pages and its size exceeds 100,000,000 gigabytes: it is like the index at the end of a book and presents an entry for each word displayed on each web page that has been indexed. In fact, when Google indexes a web page, it adds it to the entries for all the words it contains.
Because the Web and other content is constantly changing, the search engine’s scanning processes are constantly running to keep up, learning how often content that has already been examined is being changed and scanning it as necessary, and also discovering new content as new links to those pages or information are displayed.
A curious aspect is that the Google search index contains more of what is on the Web, as the search engine’s own documentations state, because “ useful information may be available from other sources.” In fact, there are multiple indexes for different types of information, which is gathered through scanning, collaborations, data feed submissions, and through Google’s encyclopedia of facts, the Knowledge Graph. These different indexes allow a user to search within millions of books from the largest collections, find travel schedules through a local public transportation company, or find data provided by public sources such as the World Bank.
Technical details about indexing
From a technical point of view, the indexing procedure takes place with a fully automated crawl, without human intervention, and each web crawler works in a specific way, using the machine learning system provided by its search engine algorithm.
This step is also used by Google to determine whether a page is a duplicate of another page on the Internet or whether it is a canonical page, the one that can be shown in search results as most representative of a clustering of pages with content found on the Internet (the other pages in the cluster, remember, are considered alternate versions and might be published in different contexts, for example, if the user is searching from a mobile device or is looking for a very specific page in that cluster).
Indexing is not guaranteed and not all pages processed by Google are then actually indexed. This may also depend on the content of the page and its metadata, and major indexing problems include:
- Low quality of content on the page.
- Robots meta tag rules that do not allow indexing.
- Website design that may make indexing difficult.
It is Lizzy Harvey again who provides more analysis on this activity, which begins when the crawler, after retrieving a document, passes the content to the search engine to add it to the index: at this point, the search engine performs rendering (i.e., in a nutshell, displays the code of the page as a browser would, with some limitations, to understand how it looks to users) and analyzes the content to understand it.
Specifically, search engines look at a number of signals that describe the content and context of the page, such as keywords, title, links, headings, text, and many other things, which allow the search engines themselves to answer any query with the best possible page.
One final clarification: the Index still represents a kind of database of Web sites pre-approved by Google, which has checked the sources and information and deemed those pages safe for its users. Thus, searching on Google (and in general searching on a search engine) does not mean searching within the entire World Wide Web nor searching the entire Internet (for example, our queries will not bring us results from the notorious and infamous dark web), but searching within the pages selected by the web crawlers of that specific search engine, in a restricted database .
Ranking and publishing search results
The last activity kicks off when a person enters a query: Google’s computers search the corresponding pages in the index, then return the results deemed most useful, of best quality and most relevant to that query. Ranking or ordering of pages occurs based on the query, but often the order can change over time if better information becomes available.
In general, it can be assumed that the higher the ranking of a page, the more relevant the search engine considers that page and site to be with respect to the query.
Given the vast amount of information available, finding what we are looking for would be virtually impossible without a tool that organizes the data: Google’s ranking systems are designed precisely for this purpose and, through automatic generation, sort hundreds of billions of web pages and other content in the search index to provide useful and relevant results in a fraction of a second.
Relevance is determined by taking into account hundreds of factors, such as location, language, and the user’s device (computer or phone)-for example, a search for “bicycle repair shops” shows different results to a user in Paris than to a user in Hong Kong.
This extra work is used to ensure more than just matching the query with the keywords in the index, and to provide useful results, Google might consider context, alternative wording, and more: for example, “silicon valley” might refer to the geographic region or television program, but if the query is “silicon valley cast,” results about the region would not be very useful. Other queries may be indirect, such as “the song in pulp fiction,” and search engines should interpret the user’s intent and show results for the music tracks featured in the movie.
Still on the subject of factors, the words used in the search, the relevance and usability of the pages, the reliability of the sources, and the settings of the user’s device can influence the appearance of the information shown in SERP. The importance attached to each factor changes depending on the type of search: for example, the date of publication of the content plays a more incisive role in responding to searches related to current topics than to searches regarding dictionary definitions, as sanctioned by the so-called Query Deserves Freshness algorithm .
As noted in the specific insights, Google identifies five broad categories of major factors that determine the results of a query, namely:
- Meaning.
- Relevance.
- Quality.
- Usability.
- Context.
Then there are cases when a page is indexed and is recognized as indexed by Search Console, but we do not see it appear in search results; the causes of this phenomenon could be as follows:
- The content of the page is not relevant to users’ queries.
- The quality of the content is low.
- Robots meta tag rules prevent publication.
The refinement of results and SERP features.
The search features displayed on the search results page also change according to the user’s query. For example, a search for “bicycle repair shops” is likely to show local results and no image results and direct links to Google Images; however, a search for “modern bicycle” is likely to show results related to images, not local results.
The appearance of additional boxes, features, and functionality also serves to complete the search engine’s mission, and thus to solve the searcher’s query as quickly and effectively as possible: the best-known example are featured snippets (short excerpts featured over organic links that succinctly answer the user’s query), Local Maps, rich results ( enriched multimedia results over classic text snippets), and knowledge panels, but the list of features is huge and constantly growing, as shown in our in-depth look at the gallery of results shown in Google SERPs through information retrieved from structured data.
Site, documents and pages: the Google vocabulary
In the old version of Google’s document (now gone), the section “What is a document?” was interesting, specifically describing the mechanism used to determine what a document was for Google, with details on how the system displayed and managed multiple pages with identical content to a single document, even with different URLs, and how it determined canonical URLs.
Starting with definitions, we then discover that “internally, Google represents the Web as a (huge) set of documents. Each document represents one or more Web pages, “ which may be ”identical or very similar, but represent essentially the same content, reachable from different URLs.” In detail, “different URLs in a document may point to exactly the same page or to the same page with small variations intended for users on different devices.”
Google “chooses one of the URLs in a document and defines it as the document’s canonical URL”: it will be “the one Google crawls and indexes most often,” while “other URLs are considered duplicate or alternate and may occasionally be crawled or published based on user request.” For example, “if the canonical URL is the URL for mobile devices, Google will likely still publish the desktop (alternate) URL for users performing desktop searches.”
Focusing on the glossary, specifically, in Google Search the following terms have this specific meaning:
- Document is a collection of similar pages, which “includes a canonical URL and possibly alternate URLs if your site has duplicate pages.” Google chooses the best URL to show in search results based on platform (mobile/desktop device), user language (hreflang versions are considered separate documents, it explains), location, and many other variables. Google “detects related pages on your site through organic crawling or through features implemented on your site, such as redirects or <link rel=alternate/canonical> tags,” while “related pages from other organizations can only be marked as alternatives if they are explicitly coded by your site (through redirects or link tags).”
- URL is “the URL used to reach a given piece of content on a site,” and it is clarified that a site “may resolve different URLs on the same page.”
- Page refers to “a given web page, reached through one or more URLs,” and there may “exist different versions of a page, depending on the user’s platform (mobile device, desktop, tablet, and so on).”
- Version means “a variant of the page, generally classified as mobile, desktop and AMP (although AMP may itself have mobile and desktop versions).” Each “version may have a different or identical URL depending on the configuration of the site,” and it is again reiterated that “ language variants are not considered different versions, but rather different documents.”
- Page or canonical URL is “the URL that Google considers to be most representative of the document,” which Google always crawls, while “duplicate URLs in the document are occasionally crawled.”
- Alternative/duplicate page or URL is “the URL of the document that Google may occasionally crawl,” which are published if Google recognizes them as “suitable for the user and the request (e.g., an alternative URL for desktop requests will be published for desktop users, rather than a canonical URL for mobile devices).”
- Site, a term “typically used synonymously with website (a conceptually related set of web pages), but sometimes used synonymously with a Search Console property, although a property may be defined in effect only as part of a site. A site can include subdomains (and even organizations, for properly linked AMP pages).”
Google ranking, what factors influence ranking
Ranking , then, is the crucial stage in which Google decides which pages to place at the top of its SERPs, establishing the relevance and authority of a page for that particular query and where to then place it among the search results.
Google’sranking algorithm is powered by more than 200 different factors that work together to build the complete picture for each page. Prominent among these are key elements such as content quality, relevance to the query,user experience, site speed, and site compatibility on mobile devices. Google consistently aims to reward sites that offer real value to users, and this means focusing more and more on pages that are well-structured, usable from all types of devices, and capable of immediately satisfying search intent.
Content quality is one of the main factors influencing ranking. Google favors content that is informative, detailed and well-organized-the phrase it prefers is useful, quality content. Specifically, text and page elements must be original, up-to-date and provide a useful user experience, which is why strategically oriented SEO copywriting , as well as optimization of visual elements (such as images and meta tags), are essential.
Another pivotal element is the presence of quality backlinks: links from authoritative sites grant a competitive advantage, signaling to Google that other sites regard the page as reliable and useful. However, it should be pointed out that it is not the number of backlinks that is important, but their quality and reliability, aspects that require a careful strategy in building relationships and the link network.
Finally, theuser experience. Ensuring excellent response times and smooth navigation is essential for ranking in the top spots of Google’s SERPs , and technical factors such as page load time and passing Core Web Vitals directly influence the search engine’s judgment. Conversely, slow pages with disorganized layouts or poorly optimized for mobile devices greatly penalize an SEO strategy, often even in the presence of quality content.
What are Google ranking systems, ranking systems
Most of the process just summarized happens almost instantaneously thanks to Google ranking systems, a complex and dynamic set of algorithms that operate simultaneously to rank web pages and decide what content appears in search results and in what order. Every time we enter a query into Google, these ranking systems kick in and, in a split second, scan billions of pages in their index to offer the most relevant answers.
One of the main strengths of these systems is the integration of artificial intelligence: Google’s algorithms have evolved enormously in recent years, becoming “smarter” and learning to meet our information needs more and more accurately. For example, the introduction of technologies such as Google RankBrain has enabled the search engine to understand queries even when they do not perfectly match keywords by analyzing context and semantics. It is the ability to learn and adapt that makes all the difference, so much so that today Google is able to offer accurate results even for queries never seen before.
The task of ranking systems is complex and multifactorial: first, they evaluate the relevance of content to the query entered. This evaluation is done cumulatively, going through several layers of advanced algorithms, each of which analyzes certain aspects of the content, such as keywords, structure, relevance to context and related resources. Pages with exact keywords are no longer enough to gain visibility: it is the overall context of the page, quality signals and user interaction that largely determine ranking.
One of the most fascinating aspects of these ranking systems is their ability to constantly update. Google rolls out frequent updates to the algorithm to improve the accuracy of the results and combat tactical practices that manipulate the system (such as keyword stuffing or fraudulent links). These “core updates” can cause sudden changes in rankings for a great many sites, which is why, as SEO experts, we need to constantly stay abreast of what is changing and adjust our strategies accordingly.
Ranking systems not only evaluate content in terms of text and structure, but also consider a number of technical signals, such as site speed, mobile experience and adoption of HTTPS to ensure data security. Within this analysis, each page is evaluated and sorted into a ranking that, for Google, represents the best possible balance between relevance, quality, and user satisfaction. In fact, in addition to pure content quality, it is the user experience and interaction that tip the scales in favor of one page over another.
A final point to consider is that Google’s ranking systems do not work equally for all searches. There are specific algorithms that deal with particular topics or types of queries, such as local searches, queries with commercial intent, or very general informational searches. Each type of search has its own set of specific algorithms, designed to best return results for that particular type of query.
Google’s mission and the meaning of search
The process described thus far serves to ensure compliance with Google ‘s mission statement, which, as seen, is both simple and ambitious: “Organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.” This mantra drives every aspect of the search engine, influencing the way it organizes information even in its SERPs, although the meaning of search for Google goes far beyond the act of finding web pages: it is about helping users solve problems, gain knowledge and make decisions quickly and efficiently.
The key to effectiveness lies in providing the right content at the right time. Google is committed to ensuring that the results offered are not only relevant, but more importantly useful and reliable. In this sense, Google’s mission has not remained anchored in the simple concept of “search.” The quality of the answer to the query is at the heart of every algorithm action and update. It is no longer enough to present a list of pages that respond to a single keyword: it is necessary to offer a few that actually help the user solve his or her problem or explore a topic of interest, all in the shortest possible time.
This is a concept that goes beyond simple SERP mechanics: it is a philosophy based on information efficiency. After all, Google’s own algorithm is constantly evolving precisely for the purpose of “capturing” the deeper meaning of a search, making the way results are presented more and more sophisticated. At the heart of the mission, then, is a firm point: regardless of the complexity of the query, the final answer must fit seamlessly into the user’s experience.
This philosophy reminds SEO professionals of the importance of creating content not only optimized for keywords, but also designed to actually answer user queries. It is only by aligning ourselves with the principles of Google’s mission that we can improve our visibility on the search engine and provide valuable content, which does not stop at appearances, but is genuinely useful, universally accessible and understandable.
The importance of search intent
Closely related to the concept of usefulness is the understanding of search intent, that is, the intention behind every search query, which is now at the heart of any effective SEO strategy. It is no longer enough to know what keywords to include in texts: what really matters to Google is the ability to interpret what users want to find and why they are searching for it.
In practical terms, to understand search intent Google goes beyond literal keyword analysis and leverages patterns of behavior, historical data, geographic location, and broader context to determine what is really important to the person who made that search. For example, if we type in “best smartphones 2024,” Google knows that we are probably looking for reviews, comparisons, or buying guides and not just technical information. On the other hand, if we search for “how to change iphone battery,” the search engine will understand that we want practical answers or tutorials. This is what makes search intent so critical for the user and decisive for SEO competition.
The search intent challenge pushes us to optimize every step of the content production process. Texts, images, videos must be created in a way that not only answers the specific query, but anticipates any related questions or provides an immediate practical solution
How does Google assess quality? The work of Search Quality Raters
But who monitors this work? Beyond internal evaluation mechanisms and the work of automated algorithms, the quality of the results Google delivers in response to our queries is also carefully monitored and measured by a large team of Search Quality Raters. Although the algorithm does the bulk of the work, the job of these external human raters is still crucial to maintaining high standards in search and ensuring that the information proposed is relevant, reliable and aligned with the user’s search intent .
Search Quality Raters work under very specific guidelines, called “Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines”, a veritable internal manual that outlines the criteria by which Google aims to judge sites and web pages. Their job is to manually evaluate a wide range of search queries and provide a judgment on the quality of the results that the algorithm has produced. These judgments do not immediately affect the ranking of individual sites or pages, but they serve as a valuable feedback base for Google’s engineers: the ratings are used to train the algorithms and to make changes that can further improve the automation and efficiency of the search engine. In this way, ranking systems evolve more and more accurately over time.
The work of Search Quality Raters is based on a few main pillars – such as the aforementioned authoritativeness, relevance and reliability of indexed pages. To assess these characteristics, raters must examine the page content ,user experience , and verify the sources of the information presented to ensure that they meet the high quality standards expected by Google. One of the most relevant aspects of this process is the use of E-E-A-T parameters (from the initials of Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness, in Italian Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), which is used to ensure that the content is not only relevant, but was created (or at least overseen) by competent and credible sources. In short, a high-value page is one that demonstrates direct experience, certified expertise and authority on the subject matter, and is perceived as trustworthy by users and the relevant community. As mentioned, these concepts are not a real direct ranking factor, but it seems clear that above all, brand authority and trustworthiness are elements that Google takes into account when it has to decide how and where to rank a page, as we have also seen with our recent analyses on ranking.
Another very important aspect is precisely search intent analysis : evaluators not only check that the content is technically correct, but also have to determine whether it succeeds in satisfying exactly what the user is looking for. An informational query should never return sales-oriented results, for example, nor should a transactional query provide only general information. Being able to “step into the shoes” of the user and anticipate their needs is one of the long-term goals of both the algorithm and Search Quality Raters.
The history of Google Search: from a garage to online dominance in search
We cannot refrain from stepping back in time to discover a bit about the origins of this search engine that today fills most of our days (both as users and as SEOs, marketers and site publishers).
Google ‘s adventure officially began in September 1998, but its roots go back to a search project developed a few years earlier within Stanford University. It was here that Larry Page and Sergey Brin, then doctoral students in computer science, began work on a new method for cataloging and searching for information on the Web. Their goal was to improve existing search engines, which at the time relied primarily on counting keyword repetitions without regard to the quality or authority of the indexed pages. The genius insight behind Page and Brin’s idea was to create an algorithm that would not just count keywords but, through a link-based method, be able to determine the relevance and authority of a web page.
PageRank, as the system devised by Larry Page was called, represented a real revolution: the algorithm assigned a score to each web page, based on the quantity and quality of links it received from other sites. In practice, a page with many links from authoritative sites was considered relevant because it was deemed valuable by other credible resources. This idea transformed search activity by making it much more accurate and efficient, allowing for more relevant results. By counting not only direct relevance (keywords), but also the impact a page had through its network of external references, it represented a momentous breakthrough.
The project, initially dubbed “Backrub,” evolved rapidly, and in 1997 the name Google was adopted . Google’s first headquarters was a garage in Menlo Park, California, courtesy of Susan Wojcicki (who would later lead YouTube). Their initial budget, $100,000, came from an investment by Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, during an informal meeting. This informal but determined approach reflected what Google would later become: a company always on the cutting edge, but rooted in a culture focused on continuous innovation.
The early years were a period of impressive growth. Google, even without massive marketing campaigns, began to gain millions of users through the sheer quality of its search engine. Within a few years, it was already indexing billions of pages, while its competitors – engines like AltaVista, Yahoo! and Lycos – struggled to keep up. The simplicity of its homepage, consisting only of a logo and a search bar, represented the paradigm of usability. In September 2004 the company went public with a public offering of more than $1 billion, consolidating its dominance in the digital search market. But Google did not want to be just “a” search engine: it soon began to diversify its reach.
From the mid-2000s Google began to develop products outside of pure search, expanding into areas such as mobile, online advertising, and enterprise software solutions. It was during this period that services such as Google Ads, which soon after became one of the company’s financial pillars, and Gmail, the e-mail service that would revolutionize the handling of digital correspondence, were born. In addition, 2005 saw the launch of Google Maps, which in a short time revolutionized the way people use maps and navigate the physical world with a detailed representation of roads, buildings, and terrain across the planet, enhanced by features such as directions, real-time navigation , and Street View , which provides panoramic street-level views.
In 2006 Google released Google Docs, which later became part of Google Drive, which is one of the biggest steps forward in online collaboration and cloud storage, allowing users to create, save and share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other files in real time, eliminating the need for physical file transfers or sending and receiving emails. The same year also saw the acquisition of YouTube, still the world’s leading site for sharing and viewing videos, while 2008 saw the debut of Google Chrome, still one of the most widely used browsers globally.
But probably one of the most significant developments was the acquisition of Android Inc. in 2005, a small mobile software maker led by Andy Rubin. Google transformed Android into the globally dominant open-source mobile operating system . The first Android device was launched in 2008 , and from there, Android quickly grew to become the most widely used operating system in the world, with billions of devices powered by the software across the planet. Android has changed the rules of the game in the smartphone industry, allowing Google to extend its reach far beyond the Web.
Underlying these successes prevails one concept: Google is not just a search engine, but an ever-expanding ecosystem of services and innovations, all centered on the original idea of organizing information and making it usable – in every area of daily life. From the Menlo Park garage to the complex strategies that dominate future technology, the essence of Google thus remains the same: trying to anticipate users’ needs and make all forms of information present, past and future usable.
The birth of Alphabet and the farewell of Page and Brin
Looking instead at the business and organizational aspect alone, an important chapter in Google’s history opened on August 10, 2015, when founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced a major restructuring of the company, with the creation of a new holding company called Alphabet. The goal of this restructuring was to divide the enormous scope that Google had acquired, separating its core businesses from the rest of the projects that had been brought under the company’s umbrella over time.
Alphabet thus became Google’s parent company , allowing Google to focus purely on its core business (search, advertising, devices and digital solutions such as Android, YouTube and the cloud products). All other more experimental and risky ventures, such as self-driving car projects , medical research with Verily , and other technological “moonshots,” were reorganized under other subsidiaries. This arrangement allowed each entity to operate with greater autonomy, preventing parallel projects from directly affecting Google’s financial and operational performance-although the Google leak revealed that this division was not always respected.
Alphabet Inc. is now the holding company that owns Google and all other companies controlled by it. Its current CEO is Sundar Pichai , who assumed this role on December 3, 2019, although Pichai was actually appointed CEO of Google back in 2015 , replacing Larry Page in the role of chief executive of the holding company’s largest division. When Page and Brin announced in 2019 their decision to step aside from day-to-day control of Alphabet, Pichai assumed the dual position of CEO of both Google and Alphabet .
Under his leadership, Alphabet has continued to expand its portfolio of projects, investing in artificial intelligence, quantum computing , and emerging fields such as autonomous driving and biotechnology.
As for the company’s two historical founders, although Larry Page and Sergey Brin are no longer at the operational helm of Alphabet’s day-to-day operations, they remain key figures from the perspective of ownership and strategic decisions. Both retain significant influence as members of the board of directors and, together, still own shares with preferred voting rights that allow them to exercise significant control over the company’s major decisions.
When was Google born and when is Google’s birthday celebrated?
It may seem a bit bizarre, but this question has often caused confusion and has become one of the most well-known Google easter eggs.
Over the years, in fact, Google has celebrated its birthday on various dates, including September 15 and September 4, because the event chosen as the occasion has “changed.”
To explain further, according to official records the day of domain registration and online launch of Google Search is September 15, 1997. But also relevant was Sept. 4, 1998, a key day in the birth of the Google company, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin signed the documents formalizing the debut of the incorporation called precisely Google.
However, the iconic Google Doodle page, which celebrates the search engine’s anniversary each year with a special illustration, has now “made official” September 27 as the main date, which is therefore effectively the day chosen for Google’s actual birthday.
In fact, on September 27, 1998, the record number of pages indexed in the search engine’s database compared to its competitors occurs, and in particular since 2002 this has been the day handpicked and celebrated as Google’s birthday even today, as seen in this screenshot from Seroundtable that encompasses all the doodles launched between 2002 and 2023 (since in 2024 the anniversary “skipped”).
What Google means: the origins of the name
Speaking then of funny (or at least harmless) matters, there are various legends also around the origins of the name of the search engine, which according to the most credited version is connected to a mistake-a real case of misspelling. For their search engine, Page and Brin wanted a hyperbolic name that would immediately express its ability to organize the vast amount of information available on the Web.
The choice fell on the term googol, coined by U.S. mathematician Edward Kasner in 1937 to define the number 1 followed by 100 zeros, which seemed perfect to metaphorically represent the vastness of the Web. When registering the company, however, they misspelled the word and googol became Google, a name that evidently brought good luck!
There are other versions of this story, which downplay the error and link the final choice of the term to various puns in the English language. In particular, to the verb to goggle – to widen one’s eyes in surprise – and to the noun goggles – protective goggles that improve vision and allow one to look closely – or even to the character in a U.S. comic strip, named precisely Barney Google, to whom the famous song “Barney Google with the Goo-Goo-Googly Eyes” (1923) and a commemorative stamp (included among the 20 Comic Strip Classics of the United States) were dedicated.
The impact of AI on Google: RankBrain, Hummingbird, Bert, MUM and beyond
If this is the past, we can’t help but look a bit at the present and future of this complex mechanism, in which the role of artificial intelligence is emerging with increasing force, which has had a transformative impact on the way Google manages search, driving the very foundations of its algorithmic operation.
From the earliest stages of its history, the company recognized the potential of AI as a lever for improving the user search experience, and today the centrality these systems have assumed within its ranking systems cannot be underestimated. To talk about AI at Google is to trace a path from the earliest AI-based algorithms to the latest evolutions that aim to make search increasingly precise, contextualized, and proactive.
One of the first key moments in this process occurred in 2013 with the release of Hummingbird, an update that marked the shift from the traditional focus on keywords to a more comprehensive and complex understanding of queries. Hummingbird was the first tangible sign of a revolution that Google was preparing within its algorithms. Its introduction represented a breakthrough in Google’s ability to understand the context and meaning of words, no longer isolated and compartmentalized, but connected as part of a larger discourse. Hummingbird in fact allowed for better handling of conversational queries, an anticipation of the later transition to the world of voice searches and the growing use of digital assistants.
But the real step change came two years later, in 2015, with the refinement of RankBrain, Google’s first true in-house algorithm based on machine learning , confirming how artificial intelligence was now at the heart of its search improvement strategy. RankBrain allowed Google to analyze more advanced complex queries, especially those never seen before, understanding search intent even in situations of ambiguity or ambivalence: thus, the search engine was able to become more “intelligent” and interpret queries through the meaning of words and not only through rigid associations based on single keywords. This has had decisive consequences not only on Google’s ability to answer novel queries, but also on how SEO content is constructed: it is no longer enough to repeat keywords to get good results; rather, one must create content that is rich in meaning and tangible utility.
In 2019 Google took a further step forward with the introduction of BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers), a radical update in natural language understanding. BERT has taken search systems’ understanding of language to the next level, as it is able to examine the context on both the left and right of each word within a sentence. In practice, Google no longer decodes only the literal meaning of words, but analyzes a whole sentence and its semantic context to better understand the intent of the query. This ability to “make sense” of complex or ambiguous phrases has enabled Google to deliver increasingly relevant and targeted results, making it more sophisticated in handling contextual searches and increasingly common colloquial queries by introducing the concept of Natural Language Processing (NLP).
Google’s focus on AI did not stop with BERT, however. In 2021, the company unveiled MUM (Multitask Unified Model), a system that promises an even more significant leap forward in information processing. MUM is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT and can not only understand natural language, but also converse with it and perform complex tasks in multiple languages. MUM ‘s true potential lies in its ability to break down language barriers and generate more comprehensive and multifaceted responses through multitasking models that can verify and correlate information from diverse and even multi-format sources, such as text, images, and video. This forces a rethinking of how to present and optimize content. MUM is also able to formulate precise answers with respect to very detailed queries that require consulting several sources simultaneously, anticipating what will be the future evolution of search intent: an increasing ability of the engine to understand complex questions and provide comprehensive answers, sometimes without the user having to consult a single page.
After MUM, work focused on Gemini, an ambitious project that aims to create a new generation of multimodal AI models. Officially announced in late 2023, Gemini integrates advanced generative AI capabilities within a wide range of Google products, from search to virtual assistants, making search even more intuitive, conversational, and personalized. One of its first practical applications has been the Search Generative Experience feature with AI Overviews (as yet unavailable globally), i.e., AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results to provide a quick and concise overview of a topic, even before the user starts scrolling through traditional links, so as to provide him or her with an immediate informational summary that is useful for quickly understanding a topic and deciding whether to search further.
