How does the Search Engine(s) work? My Simplified Explanation

January 7, 2010
Category: Marketing Mastery

I find that there are many persons, who find problem finding a solution in the Internet. Do you find the same for yourself?

Oook.. Lets start it this way.

I have a problem. My dog barks. I went to the internet to find some solution. I called for a search engine and entered a keyword that describes my problem and then wait a few second for the results. I look through them to see if there is something interesting.

If I can’t find something useful in the first few pages, I try some different search terms and try again. If i find something which can actually We probably do the same thing dozens a time a day to solve our problem of your own and so do millions of people across the world everyday who are actually searching for some action or solution and thats what makes internet marketing a completely different animal from the regular marketing.

It you understands how search engines that drive in the internet work, you can use that knowledge everywhere in your online business. Now lets take a look at exactly whats different about the world of Internet. Offline, if you want to reach the market, you buy an ad, you make a commercial, you do public relations and you try to get your product into the store that carries that sort of thing..

Then you hold the message so that it may at-least reach a few people who have the problem that your product solves. Offline Marketing is basically “Solution Seeking People“. while on the other hand, Online Marketing is the opposite.. Its “People Seeking Solutions“. And thats what makes the Internet the best place to build your business..

You can exactly what types of problem that people are trying to search and supply a solution to them accordingly. The search engines i.e., Google, Yahoo, Bing and more makes it possible.

The search terms that you generally type into the search bar of a search engine are called “Keywords”, and every-time you enter a keyword phrase, the search engine looks for websites across the internet that contain those words or very similar ones, and thats how the search engines work to deliver results that are likely to be relevant..

Now you might wonder, how the Search Engines know what kind of websites out there which will actually match your request. Well.. they “Index” them. The Search Engines send out programs called “Spiders” that crawl the internet following links from page to page and sites to sites.

The Primary job is to record the words which exists on the page they land on and then sends them back to the Search Engine’s Giant Database for Indexing. So when you type a keyword into the search bar, the search engine goes to its Index and finds all the sites with matching keywords. Then it applies a mathematical formulae to determine which webpages are more likely to contain the information that the searcher is looking for.

First and foremost in that calculation, are the words which are used on the page and how they are used. Do the words show often on the page? Are they in context?

Are there synonyms and other words in the same subject? Are the words placed in prominent places like headlines or may be address of the page? And thats how from billions and billions of webpages, the search engines can point you to the website that might be holding the solution to your problem. But you might not know that the search engines also record all the keywords that people type in. All those problems that people are trying to solve. All those words that they are using to solve them. They are all waiting to be analyzed and there are some great tools that do just that.

Lets check how to find out a keyword which is already in demand before you take all the risk of starting a business. Once you know that there is a demand, then you can supply.

You will look for a group of people searching on the Internet for a solution to the same problem and not finding many relevant results. Thats the niche market that you can serve. Interestingly, the Internet is the only place where you can do the market research with the best possible detail. Its so complete that you can know whether there is a hungry market out there before you spend a single cent. Even if you dont have any clue about what product to sell or what markets are available out there. And if you have already got a service/ product to sell, then this research will help you to find new customers.

Now one of the biggest mistakes that people commit while starting off with the online business is that they go after a big saturated market. Say for example, there are loads of dog owners over there.. so lets search for something which provides dog training or stuff. Try “Dog Training” into your favorite search engine, and look at the number of results. I find a millions of listings.

We know that most of searchers never look pass the first page of their search engine results. So what are your chances of competing in that saturated market? A tiny slice of the big pie is not the way to go on the internet. Even with the tiny slice, there is still too much competition and its too well established. You wanna go for a big slice of a small pie.

A niche market is the group of small group of people who are looking for the solution to a very specific problem. Now it can still be dog related but unless you know it down, there will be swamped with a very high competition. Here is some trick for you. “How to train a Border Collie to do tricks?” – You can look for the particular keywords and know exactly what the person is after.

This means that you can create something that actually solves their problem and there is a descent chance that they will buy your solution. Now take a look of how many other websites that show up for the particular keyword “How to train a Border Collie to do tricks?”. Here your site has got a far better chance to show up on the 1st page of the search engine when searched with that key-phrase. There are basically 2 things to check out when you target a niche market i.e.,

Its totally focussed on a small set of related problems.
And it may have some competition but not that so much that you cant hope to compete.

DONT worry about going for a market and restricting yourself. In the world of Internet, you can reach anyone anywhere. So a business which cant survive in a local mall can not only survive but can generate tonnes of money serving a niche market thats spread all over the globe.

Here are some other example: