How Search Engines Work

The first thing you need to understand is that the internet is made up of millions of computers and it takes years for a search engine to read all the pages.

So when you do a search at Google or Yahoo, they are searching pages that they have read and included in their inventory (saved to their own hard drive). They can't include the entire internet, no search engine or one company is big enough to do that. Google has over 100,000 computers that make up its search base. Even with that volume of space, its just the tip of the iceberg.

When a search is done, the content they search could be several years old. It is impossible to search every page online, so they have predetermined the pages that are relavent to your search. They update that data frequently as they read (or crawl) more pages online.

The point is, that they are slow. Getting a website indexed can take several months. But being included in relavent searches can take even longer. Its not a snappy process. It takes time to process data and generate search results.

When you search for "Website Hosting" they try to give you pages that they think you want. Pages that they have been working for years to read and process.

There is no way to speed up the process. The internet is just too big. So when you make a change on a page, it could be a year or more before the search engine updates it.

Since the search engines have limited space, they will only include good websites. That is important to consider while building your own website. If your website is week, small or has little to offer, chances are it will not be included in the index.

For more detailed information on search engines read our full search engines explained article.