What Should You Expect from a Search Engine?

Search engines are constantly improving their search queries for a better user experience! It’s imperative that SEO’s understand this because we need to help build a better web for tomorrow! :)

Every time, Google changes its algorithms – it causes a frenzy among those internet marketers relying heavily on the search engines. The latest change made many marketers stock up on Maalox and Pepto Bismol as it made them literally sick to their stomachs.

Great post. Thank you for explaining this point by point. I often used to think about the activities and rules of a search engine. Yes it is not a easy part to run a search engine in this market of competition but they are doing it well.

well said about search engine and its functionalities. and also we need more information regarding search engine updates and its uses in android platform. keep updating.

i am new to the word of search engine. here explains the motivation of search engines and with that details, Updation and details of search engines and how the SEO is used in search engines. Thanks for all these explanation.

We always look forward to Google algorithm updates. As creators and shepherds of business-to-business websites where the heart and soul is content that is optimized with on-site SEO (80% of which is just keyword-smart copywriting), we almost always see increases in organic traffic. This is because the “SEO companies” are focused on link building, which may not be black hat but is usually questionable at least to some degree.

I also agree that Google and Bing just want to do one thing: provide the highest quality search results for whatever you are searching for and to prevent people who game the system from appearing ahead of quality of content (gaming the system really boils down to doing the minimum amount of effort to get the maximum exposure – i.e. jump to the first result without quality content and onsite SEO best practices). The benefit to the search engines is that you come back and search more (and see all the AdWords ads).

One example of this, is that I like how they give extra keyword weighting in headings because people often skim headings to see what portion of a page they want to read. Therefore, headings are highly relevant and key to the success of a page and are weighted as such by the search engines.

I use mixture all at once to avoid tracking through my search history. How is this possible you all might ask? Easy! I use add-ons/extensions to get the job done!

But personally I use Duckduckgo, Startpage and Ecosia. These three combined give me the best worlds of Google and Bing with enhanced and customizable features for videos, images, instant and related searches, appearance, security/privacy (no tracking, no ads) and much more under the hood.

I employ Google’s search for the most part and used to value their search results: they made sense and I could find stuff and be on my merry little way. Now, I get more crap in search results that are not even related to my searches than I do for legitimate results.

A recent example was in a very specific search for a song my band plays. Despite that fact that the particular song (a top chart song from the 70s) is published all over the web, Google kept showing me YouTube videos of people covering the song — not instruction on how to play the song. They showed me membership sites that only offered to sell me subscriptions to access all their songs.

Google also could not seem to understand that I wanted sheet music, tab, a guitar tutorial — it just kept shoving other stuff my way and never did produce what I was looking for.

This is also the case in many of my local searches now. I Google something in Los Angeles and get results from Florida, Missouri — all over.

I understand (and loved) all your thoughts and agree that search engines strive to please consumers first — they should. But Google has made so many changes that it now seems to have made search results so variable and with all the wrong data. For example, I don’t want Google to factor in my previous searches, what I bough in Amazon or liked on Facebook. I want my searches to be clean and fresh from assumptions because multiple family members use my PC for their own stuff.

That said, playing by the rules used to be enough. Serving your consumers used to be enough but now, I feel like we are reverting a bit — it is harder to show in searches even when playing by the rules and making your site all about your people (and not search engines.) But what does show in search is often mind boggling in how wrong they got it.

I think you should also write an article on how users can get a better experience from Google. It’s only fair!

I completely agree with all the things you explain about SEO.
Thanks for your guidance, much helpful.

Awesome post about search engine logic.

There has been paradigm shift on how consumer is searching for products and services online. These behavioral science techniques are useful when it comes to google ranking algorithms.
Thanks for sharing. Great post.

@Thanks Duane Forrester for adding some extra very useful information in this awesome post.

Interesting read (comments too) :-)

@David – while the stats may be true, the fact remains that the engines need to focus on the entirety of the web when reviewing for trends. The stats do point out one thing…if you want to watch for negative trends as they emerge, WP could be a reasonable starting point. I know hackers like WP, which means the engines need to be careful, too.

@Joe – can’t say exactly why they haven’t adopted the Voice XML, Joe, but it might have to do with a few things. For example, if they’re already working on their own solutions, focusing on a different one is a lot of lost investment. Could be the protocol has limits the engine doesn’t like, could be they WANT to go proprietary. Fact is, we’ll likely never clearly know. might come down to simple math – while usage is growing, its not close enough to a tipping point to make the decision for them clear enough.

As for stats and data being shared? No business likes to share it’s data – it *can* be sued by the competition to learn a great many insights. Double edged sword there.

But the bottom line is this – I know a lot of folks at Bing and have met a lot at Google over the years. Not a single person seemed to be the sort to willfully harm another person or business. While changes may manifest that benefit some and not others, change happens.

If they don’t want to hurt businesses then why have none of them adopted Voice XML for the growing voice search results? Scraping an answer knowing that giving it to the user is likely to keep them from going to the website is hurting businesses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VoiceXML

And why are they not providing stats on it in their own tool sets or in standard analytics?

It’s a common misconception that WordPress sites “are not “higher traffic” sites”.

27% of the top 10,000 sites on the web use WordPress (that’s higher than the 25% penetration rate of all websites). WordPress helps power major brands like CNN, Time, Tech Crunch, and many many more.

High traffic websites are actually more likely to run WordPress than low traffic websites.

I am expecting my business to run proper. :)

I do agree with you the thing you explained about wordpress.

Google updates should always come time to time to filter the websites which ranked high in google but not relevant to the query being searched.

These websites gets higher rank in google by just doing good on-Page and Off page tricks. But infact that is the Black Hat SEO.

Hello Duane,
I found this post through google just and have read it fully.
You have just explained the truth behind search engine algorithm. It seems you are the real SEO expert. I like the way you related wordpress with Google search engine.

Awesome post!

Great article, Duane! I Couldn’t agree with you more. Focusing on the user gives SEOs a common target with the search engines, and that naturally will lead to better results because we are going after the same audience.