Understanding Search Engines: How They Work and Their Benefits for Your Business

When we start promoting online, every digital marketer is likely familiar with terms like “Googling” or “Search Engine.” This topic has become one of the favorites when discussing business opportunities that can be gained once your business website is optimized for search engines.

This article aims to explain what a search engine is, how it works, and what you need to do to maximize its benefits as a business owner or marketer.

What is a Search Engine?

In general, Indonesian digital marketers often associate search engines with Google’s search service. This branding is not incorrect, as according to statscounter.com, Google controls more than 98% of the search engine market share in Indonesia. A search engine is a platform that collects data from many sources to help users find the information they need. It can be likened to a library filled with books, providing references to users.

However, there are many other search engines available in Indonesia besides Google.

The world’s first search engine was Archie, launched in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal, USA. The name “Archie” is short for “Archives.” Google itself was launched eight years later, in 1998, by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and has since grown into the world’s most popular search engine.

The First Version of Google – 1998

Functions and Benefits of a Search Engine

According to Wikipedia, a web search engine is a computer program designed to search for files stored in the World Wide Web (WWW), FTP services, mailing lists, or newsgroups in one or several servers on a network.

From this definition, the search engine’s function was originally to provide information from its database. While it sounds simple, in practice, it’s much more complex because it requires hundreds of algorithms to understand the intent and interests of the information seeker.

With the advancement of technology, big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, the benefits of search engines, which were initially used to search documents, have expanded. They now include answering questions and offering recommendations.

In many cases, users of Google may not even need to visit websites, as Google often answers their questions directly in the search results.

Alternative Search Engines Besides Google

Besides Google, here are four alternative search engines that make up the top 5 search engine market share in Indonesia:

1. Bing (bing.com) – Market share: 0.46% as of August 2020 Developed by Microsoft, Bing is an improvement over their previous search engines, Live Search and MSN Search, after acquiring technology from PowerSet. Bing offers search capabilities for websites, images, news sites, and Xrank (search based on user behavior).

2. Yahoo Search (search.yahoo.com) – Market share: 0.79% Yahoo started as a web directory, not a search engine, but partnered with Microsoft in 2009 to offer Yahoo Search as an alternative search engine. Its strong branding has helped it gain a larger market share than Bing, even though it uses the same search algorithms.

3. Yandex Search (yandex.com) – Market share: 0.3% Yandex, based in Russia, focuses on real-time searches like news sites. In 2009, Yandex launched MatrixNet, a machine learning technology that competes with Google’s technology. Yandex is used by over 60% of internet users in Russia.

4. DuckDuckGo (duckduckgo.com) – Market share: 0.19% DuckDuckGo is known for offering a unique user experience as a privacy-focused search engine. It promises not to collect personal information, browser data, or IP addresses, using encrypted technology. Launched in 2008, DuckDuckGo now processes over 50 million searches daily.

How Search Engines Work

Search engines typically operate in three stages: Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking.

• Crawling: The search engine activates a site explorer to view the structure of data and links on the website. These links, whether internal or external, serve as references for future searches. This explorer is also known as a “Crawler” or “Spider.”

• Indexing: After crawling, search engines collect all the search data in one location, which becomes part of the big data for each search engine.

• Ranking (Algorithm): In this phase, the search engine receives an information request (known as a query) from the user. The search engine’s algorithm attempts to provide the most relevant information based on the query. For Google, there are more than 200 algorithms used to determine what information is displayed in search results.

Google Search Engine Features

As of 2020, Google offers at least 16 features across four categories to help users find the information they need. These categories are:

1. Rich Snippets: Visual representations of information, such as star reviews.
2. Paid Results: Google Ads displayed above or below organic search results.
3. Universal Results: Search results in various formats, such as images, news articles, or snippets.
4. Knowledge Graph: A panel displaying detailed information typically found on the right side of search results.

Some popular features in Google search include:

• Google Ads: Paid ads placed at the top or bottom of search results.
• Shopping Ads: Ads for products in Google Shopping.
• Featured Snippet: A “Zero Position” snippet summarizing the solution to a query.
• People Also Ask: Related questions that appear during searches.
• Local Map Pack: Local business information in map form.
• Recipes Pack: Displays popular recipe results related to a search.
• Video Pack: Displays relevant video results.
• Image Pack: Displays image results.
• Top Stories: Latest news related to the search.
• Knowledge Card: Provides general information in search results.
• Knowledge Panel: Information from reliable sources like Google My Business or Wikipedia.

SEO Optimization for Search Engines

To be recommended by search engines, website owners or webmasters generally take steps to ensure their web pages are highly relevant to their target audience. This optimization is generally known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

SEO involves optimizing the Crawling, Indexing, and Ranking stages. While Google does not provide a specific formula for SEO success, websites should generally meet the following criteria:

• Be a solution for Google users
• Be well-structured and easy to use (On-Page SEO)
• Have no technical errors (Technical SEO)
• Be sourced from reliable, trusted sites (Off-Page SEO)

For discussions on SEO, you can join business and marketing communities at Standout Digital via the following link.

If you want to discuss with the Doxadigital team how SEO can help improve your business performance, visit our SEO services page or contact us at info@doxadigital.com, call +62215324093, or WhatsApp chat at (+6282288883692, chat only).

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