Written by: Ryan Walsh

Date: 14/07/2025

How do the search engines work? Are you perplexed as to how Google works?

Well, don’t be.

We are here to help you understand how Google works.

The reason is that once you are equipped with this knowledge, you will have a better understanding and appreciation of how the algorithms work.

This knowledge can then be used to help you create better quality SEO strategies which can quite simply help your business to rank higher.

 

Googlebot

In a nutshell, Google uses the “Googlebot” to crawl and index the internet.

Create a detailed flow diagram, make it colourful, explain exactly what “Googlebot” is, plus also what its job is.

Once a page has been evaluated by Googlebot, it’s then over to Google’s algorithms to weigh how good the page is.

This means calculating well how good is that pages ranking factors?

How does it do this?

 

Well, through calculating the page quality. Googlebot and Google’s algorithms, therefore, ask the following questions:

• How many backlinks does the page have?
• How good is the content marketing?
• Do the facts/statistics tally with Google’s Knowledge Vault?
• How good is the content marketing? Is helpful?
• How good is the on-page SEO
• What’s the Google E-EAT score?

 

You should take your time to work out how Google works

In our view, too many businesses attempt to tackle SEO and end up weakening their businesses’ SEO before they even get started.

This means that sometimes before the company has even got out of the starting blocks, they could be building spammy links.

This will not be enhancing your businesses search engine optimisation in anyway. In matter of fact, it could be severly damaging it.

This means that rather than pushing forward, businesses often fall into reserve gear by adding content thin pages, building spammy links, and ignoring technical SEO issues.

As a result, the site will never rank high on Google unless these issues are addressed.

Plus, if you implement spammy SEO, then Google Panda or Google Penguin penalties can be triggered.

This means that the search engine optimisation can be severely damaged as the website could be de-indexed.

Therefore do read more about Google E-EAT, as well as Google WebMaster Guidelines.

 

What you will learn from this post if you stick around:

• What is a search engine? How do they rank content marketing?
• What does crawling and indexing mean?
• How does Google determine if a page is good quality or not?
• How can you get a business higher up Google’s pecking order and be ranked at the top of Google?

 

First things first, what are search engines?

Search engines are powered by an algorithm, which is a combination of formulas and AI.

Search engines, such as Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo, then find relevant pages on the internet, and order the results based on the pages that are most relevant for that query.

Sounds simple

Sounds like a walk in the park, right?

However, Google is said to use 200 distinct “ranking signals” to determine a company’s SEO strength.

The most important are backlink quality, content marketing quality as well as how good the on-page SEO has been implemented.

Yet, with that said, as mentioned earlier there are a huge number of other signals as well.

Then, Google, in a matter of milliseconds, will present the pages with the strongest ranking factors, as well as the most relevant answers.

For example, lets say that your looking for a local fencing company to complete some work at your property.

The most relevant businesses will be ranked according to how strong the companies organic SEO ranking factors are.

The company with the strongest signals, well that company will rank 1st.

 

Google hold 91.04% of the search engine market share.

It’s essential to optimise your company website for as many search engines as possible.

However, in our experience, our clients only want to know where their business ranks on Google.

This stands to reason because Google holds a massive percentage of the search engine market.

Tell me more, how does Google work?

How can I get my company to the top of Google?

 

Googlebot roams the internet following links.

These bots are called crawlers or “spiders”; their job is to index pages, then to first decipher, ‘Well, is that page even worth adding to Google’s index?’

If it’s not, if it’s, for example, a “content thin” piece of content marketing that’s been written in a blind rush, well, Google will often state the following in Google Search Console once the page has been indexed:

“Page has been crawled but not indexed” – often this is because the page hasn’t met the mark; it’s not deemed high enough quality to be indexed.

So, if you were to state how Google works in 3 simple steps, here’s how our experts would describe the process:

 

Crawling

Googlebot needs to crawl and index pages.

Therefore, your business or agency must ensure that search engines can index the page.

For example, if you have a WordPress plugin that was used during the website’s construction to place a “no-index” tag on the main pages, this will prevent Googlebot from crawling and indexing the pages.

Therefore what is important here is to make sure the pages you want indexed, to make sure they can get indexed.

You can use various SEO tools for this, as well as Google Search Console.

 

Indexing

This happens when Googlebot has finished crawling the page.

The page is then processed, as well as assigned a quality score, and Google’s complex algorithm decides whether to accept, which is called indexing, or reject the page.

If the page is indexed, it is then added to Google’s massive index and Google’s Knowledge Vault.

 

Serving the pages

Once the page is indexed, it is assigned a quality score.

This is based on Google E-EAT, and as you would expect, the pages that offer the best answer to that question will rank right at the top of Google’s organic search engine results pages.

Whether you Google “how to remove a grass stain from a shirt” or “where to buy a hyper car”, Google is only interested in serving the best answer.

This means, as a business, your content marketing today doesn’t have to be just good; it has to be superb if you want to get it ranked on page one of Google.

The reason is that your business will face stiff competition.

 

What’s in it for the search engines? How do they make a profit?

Google does a brilliant job of allowing businesses to obtain a lot of free shoppers if you do get your company onto page one of Google.

You can do this by ranking on the first pages organic results or getting placed in the Google Map’s also called the Google Business results.

However, no business can survive without a profit. This is why, right at the top of the page, you often see a tiny icon that says “ads”; that’s because Google will usually show a few paid ads for each query.

This is how Google generates revenue, as businesses are willing to pay for placement at the top of the page through Google AdWords.

It’s important to note here that some companies want to be as visible as possible.

This maximises the chances of obtaining more shoppers.

Therefore, it’s not uncommon for a digital marketing agency to manage the business’s local, organic, and Google AdWords spends.

Meaning, its sometimes possible for a business to appear 3 times on the same page, meaning often a lot more visitors can be obtained.

 

Could you tell me more about the crawling and indexing process which Google uses?

You need to know about this if you want to improve your business’s search engine optimisation.

The reason is simple: without spiders, such as Googlebot, crawling and indexing the page regularly, it will never appear in Google’s results.

You could build millions of links, write content marketing until your face turns blue, but if you can’t get that page to get indexed, it won’t appear in Google’s organic results.

Therefore, the page should be able to get indexed by Googlebot.

 

This means, for example, checking if any instructions in the robot.txt could be preventing indexing?

 

Use Google Search Console to spot indexation issues

Here’s an expert tip: if you’re wondering why none of your pages are being displayed in Google’s results, run this rapid test.

Set up Google Search Console, then submit any URL from your website for indexation using the Google Fetch feature.

This is when you can manually request that Google sends Googlebot to the website to index that page. This can then provide you with instant, important information if there is possibly an indexation issue?

For example, you could then be told the error code 5xx explaining why that page cannot be indexed.

Alternatively, you may be informed that the page has been added to the crawl queue, and therefore, it’s just a matter of time before Googlebot attempts to index that page.

 

Add a new sitemap

Help Googlebot by adding a sitemap

Rather than having Googlebot index say WordPress login page every week, at will and waste your crawl budget as you wont want that page indexed, you can instead give it a set of instructions not to index that page.

If you have an up-to-date site map, that’s an XML sitemap. What this can do is prevent Googlebot from crawling and roaming pages you don’t want indexed.

So, an XML sitemap lists the pages you want indexed, as well as the ones you don’t.

This means it makes Googlebot’s a lot simpler, and as a reward, you’re not wasting your business’s crawl budget before it decides to timeout, leave your website, and crawl another business’s page.

 

How can my business make better use of our crawl budget?

Even though Google has some of the most powerful computing power in the world, even the search giant Google has to be careful with its computing power it uses, so it doesn’t waste energy.

It doesn’t want to waste energy and resources by crawling and indexing duplicated pages repeatedly.

So, if you’re spinning around in your office chair, pondering how to make better use of your business’s crawl budget, well, here’s how you can do just that.

 

High-quality content marketing

You’ve burned the midnight oil to write content marketing that’s not just good, it’s mustard.

It has been written to achieve a very high Google E-EAT score.

Now, you want Google to index it and keep getting it indexed by Googlebot.

So do run regular checks to spot for any indexation issues that may arise.

First things first, use your business’s Google Search Console account to request that Google crawl and index the page.

Then ask your web designer to add the page to your XML sitemap.

You may sometimes be using a plugin, such as Yoast, that does this for you, but it’s always good to double-check.

Then, periodically run a check to identify broken links, technical SEO issues, or pages that are not working, ensuring you stay on top of any problems with the pages.

 

Duplicate content

Duplicated content marketing can harm your business’s SEO in several ways.

However, it can also waste your business’s crawl budget, as Googlebot may crawl multiple pages that contain duplicate content.

Ask you SEO company how you can fix duplication issues, as these can damage your organic SEO.

One reason is because duplicated pages can cause “cannibalisation” issues meaning Google doesn’t know which page to rank, as they are both the same, so may discount both duplicated pages.

 

Update your business’s robots.txt

You can use your business’s robots.txt to block Google’s crawlers from crawling pages such as the WordPress login page, which you wouldn’t want indexed.

Therefore, this can help preserve the crawl budget for more important pages that you do want crawled, such as a brand-new blog post you have just finished writing.

 

How many crawl errors does the page have?

Log in to your business’s Google Search Console on a regular basis to check for any crawl errors on the page and to address these issues.

What this can do is allow Googlebot to crawl the website much more efficiently again.

 

Content thin, low-quality pages or duplicated content marketing

Pages which are content-thin, that is, don’t offer much information, often have a very low word count, and often these pages won’t get indexed by Google.

Duplicated pages, which are often of low quality, will also not get indexed.

You have to appreciate that globally, Googlebot could be crawling and indexing millions of pages every day of the week.

Therefore, pages that are content-thin are clear indicators that the author hasn’t put much effort into writing the work; these pages will often never be indexed.

Therefore, if you plan to write blog posts or add main pages, ensure that you produce high-quality work.

To do this, we will at our marketing agency highly recommend reading about the following before you go adding new pages to your company website:

 

You should read about:

• Google E-EAT
• Why it’s essential to write helpful content marketing
• Why should all of the SEO work be white hat

 

Be relevant

So, one of the first things we would recommend before you publish your content marketing is to ask this question:

 

How does your work stack up against the competition?

If you were to ask that question to Google right now, how good are the top 10 organic results?

How does your page compare?

Is your work better?

Well, go ahead and send it for crawling and indexing.

However, if you then evaluate your work and see that the competition is far superior, they have knocked it out of the park, then you should revisit your work and make yours even better.

The reason is that this is the exact question Google is asking when crawling and indexing your work.

Is your work better than the current pages?

If it’s not, then Google has no reason to rank it higher than the competition.

However, if your work is better —better researched, written by an expert on the subject, and crammed with more helpful information —well, Googlebot will notice that this work is better quality.

If it’s far better than the existing pages on Google, you might be able to leapfrog them and rank higher.

 

Keywords are essential, but being helpful is even more important

A rubbish SEO company will focus on keyword stuffing, which is a rubbish SEO technique.

Instead, make the work as helpful as possible. It typically takes a significant amount of time to write a piece of content marketing that thoroughly answers the question; however, this is often what is needed.

When you show Google, you are an expert, the absolute bees-knees in terms of your knowledge on that particular product or service- well, you start to rank higher on Google.

 

Google Helpful Content Update.

If the written work is extremely helpful, well-written, and the dwell time is high, it means that shoppers will spend a long time reading your work while drinking coffee.

If the page has a very high dwell time, this means it can start to rank higher on Google.

The freshness of information

 

Backlinks

No article explaining how Google ranks a page would be complete without talking about backlinks.

Links are widely considered, by this agency as well, to be the main way of determining whether a page is high quality or not.

If a page has a lot of high-quality links pointing at it, it can then rank much higher in the SERPs.

Google uses quality links as a way of determining the importance of a page.

For example, if a page has high-quality links, this indicates that the page is essential and will therefore often rank higher.