Before the Days of Search Engines

When the internet was first created, there was not an easy way for average citizens to use it, or even a good reason for them to use it. At that time, anyone who wanted to get to a certain webpage had to memorize the URLs of websites or go on a web of links to find what they might be looking for, but it is pretty obvious that this was not very practical.

The main people who used it were scholars or the government to share files. But why let such an amazing invention like the internet go to waste? Soon enough, people who were forced to use it recognized its flaws, and started a turning point in internet usage by making algorithms to help find websites for them, or at least have a list of them.

The algorithm that search engines use have two main functions, to crawl and to index. Crawling is finding sites no matter what they are, while indexing sorts them into specific categories and keywords. However early engines were closer to a list as they could not crawl, or needed a human to crawl manually for them.

Most engines also have a second algorithm. This decides what is shown higher on a page. Most commonly the more times a website is cited and clicked on, the higher it is. The most popular of these algorithms is Page Rank, owned by Google.

Search engines also need a way to make money. They often have people pay them to feature their page at the top when people search for the related topic.

Ahrefs Blog, How Search Engines Work, September 1st, 2022, Joshua Hardwick, Patrick Stox, Sam Oh

Before the Days of Search Engines

So how do they work?