We are currently preparing our own updated video demonstration on how search engines work. This will be ready in the coming weeks. Thank you for your patience. Meantime have a look at the
SeeMoz video.
A web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list of results. The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate using algorithms or a mixture of algorithmic and human input. Web search engines work by storing information about many web pages, which they retrieve from the code itself. These pages are retrieved by a Web crawler or spider — an automated Web browser which follows every link on the site. The content of pages is then analyzed to determine how it should be indexed (for example, words are extracted from the titles, headings, or special fields called meta tags). The algorithms change or are updated regularly and this keeps people guessing about just how the are written. These changes allow the search engines to make it hard for people to manipulate results. It used to be easy to use words repetitively in your site to rate highly or have keywords in invisible white text. Nowadays, it is important to keep continually abreast of the way to rate highly, but a simple tip is to write useful relevant content on your website and keep links tidy with direct page specific urls and pertinent titles, descriptions,keywords etc.