How Google Works

How Google works:

Phase 1 - Discovery
Google needs to first discover all the webpages that exists.
In order to discover new webpages, there are two ways Google would generally do this:
  1. They work with major web hosts (e.g. GoDaddy, Amazon Web Services, Wix, etc), and get informed of new webpages uploaded to the host by people like you and me. 
  (if you’ve ever made a website before, to actually put it on the internet you know you’d have to upload it to a host company)

   2. Using software programs called “bots”, they scan previously identified webpages (perhaps from step 1) regularly, searching for possible links to new pages.

Phase 2 - Organization
Google then needs to organize all the webpages that exist on the internet in lists so that when you give the search engine a keyword, it can give you back the most appropriate list.

Phase 3 - Serve
When you type in a search query into Google, it takes that query and returns the appropriate list that it’s already organize in advance. Additionally, Google is smart and will also take into account your location, language preference, and even previous search history to return a list of webpages (i.e. search results) that it thinks will be most relevant for you.


Example:

Say it’s the beginning of the internet, and only three web sites have been uploaded - 1 about dogs, and 2 about cats.

Discovery: Google then runs a software program which discovers these three websites (via the methods mentioned in the discovery phase), and then its program reads the content on the pages. 
Organization: It sees that two sites have a lot mentioning cats, and 1 of them mentions dogs. So it organizes two lists, one labeled “cat” that has two entries, and the other labeled “dog”, which has 1 entry.
Serve: Then you come to Google one day, and you search “cat” - when you click ‘search’, that keyword goes to google, and they retrieve the “cat” list that they had organized earlier, and send it back to you. This is what the search results are.