To rank on Google, it helps to know what happens between publishing a page and seeing it in results. The full video explains the three stages in about nine minutes. If you prefer bite-sized lessons, the same content is split into ten shorts below.
1. Crawling
Google uses programs called crawlers, or Googlebot, to discover pages. They follow links from pages they already know and read sitemaps that site owners submit. If no link points to your page and it is not in your sitemap, Google may never find it.
- Link new pages from existing ones.
- Submit an XML sitemap in Search Console. Our sitemap generator makes one.
- Do not block important pages in robots.txt; check yours with the robots.txt generator.
2. Indexing
After crawling, Google tries to understand the page: its text, images, headings and structured data. If it decides the page is useful and not a duplicate, it stores it in the index, a huge library of pages. Pages that are thin, duplicated or marked noindex are left out.
3. Ranking
When someone searches, Google picks the most relevant and useful indexed pages and orders them. It looks at many signals, including:
- How well the content matches what the person is looking for.
- The quality and trustworthiness of the page and the site.
- Links from other sites.
- Page experience: speed, mobile use, security.
- Location, for local searches.
What this means for you
Make pages easy to find, easy to understand and genuinely helpful. That is most of SEO in one sentence.
The same lesson in ten short clips
1:00How Search Engines Work (Part-1)
1:00How Search Engines Work (Part-2)
1:00How Search Engines Work (Part-3)
1:00How Search Engines Work (Part-4)
1:00How Search Engines Work (Part-5)
1:00How Search Engines Work (Part-6)
1:00How Search Engines Work (Part-7)
1:00How Search Engines Work (Part-8)
0:58How Search Engines Work (Part-9)
0:59How Search Engines Work (Part-10)
Want the full picture? This article is part of SEO: the complete guide, our in-depth guide with everything in one place.
