Google needs to be aware of what is going on around itself. This is nothing out of the ordinary, afterall they are the worlds largest search engine, and the reason that they are number one is because they are able to take notice of what is going on around them. They are able to deliver results to us on what pages best match a search query, what the page is about, and so on.

So, one could only imagine what the impact would be if Google were to suddenly start under delivering in the way of its search results. As the quality of search slowly started to diminish, more and more low quality sites would start to take the higher positions in Google, which just wouldnt be a good thing as far as their overall user experience goes. The end result? Just like what happened in the early 2000′s when Google first showed up on the scene, a competitor will take over their spot as the number one search provider.

I know, that is a huge amount to think about, but with all of that pushed to the side for the moment, consider what it is that has kept Google ahead of the game for so long. For nearly a decade, they have dominated the search market, and as much as I could attribute this to a massively complex algorithm that you probably have no interest in, the bottom line is that you want to know how Google works, but without the technical stuff. Here goes.

Google, in all theory, is made up of three seperate components that all contribute to its success. First is what we call the “Index”. What this is is quite simple. It is a massive database hosted in one of the largest datacenters on the planet, that consists of a large list of the 800 billion or so websites that Google is aware of, plus other data that relates to these sites such as keywords, links, and so on, all of which has been discovered through effective backlink indexing.

The second important piece of the puzzle is the simple interface that we use to search that you can see at the Google home page. This is a search field, plus the results page, which consist of both organic and paid results.

The next component is where things get a little tricky. You see, with as much content as there is on the web, it would be next to impossible for humans to discover the content manually. This is where the next component comes in, small software packages that we like to call “Crawlers” that follow links on the web, and report back to the Google Index what its findings are. This relates to keywords on page, links, and much more.

Understanding all of this, it would be common sense to you now that in order to appear in the Google Index, you would simply need to be linked to from another page that is within the Google Index, right? In fact, everything that you do needs to be visible by Google in some way shape or form for it to count. Many people build mass quantities of backlinks, only to find at a later date that it has had no impact. Why? Because they didn’t practice good backlink indexing methods that make sure that their links are discovered by Google. In all cases, it is this simple – if Google are not aware of what is happening, then they can not rank you according to your plan.

I’m sure that there is much more that you could learn about Google, but wthout overcomplicating matters, this is everything that you need to know about how Google works.