How does Google actually work?

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 12:17:28 Post Subject: How does Google actually work?

How do they determine the order for search results?

Lately alot of stuff here has worked its way to the first page of Google results, and some stuff is even the #1 result... which means more traffic. Cool

Like, a search for "netdisk" or "ximeta netdisk" returns the review here as the #1 result... even before the manufacturer's page and even though there are dozens of reviews and places to buy one out there...

The new one I found today is even more general... A search of "fan controller" returns a review here as the #1 result... Even with dozens, if not hundreds of fan controllers pcs out there, and all the reviews, it could easily be referencing hundreds of other fan controllers not in a pc application.

I'm just trying to figure out how Google decides to put certain things at the top of their list?

IceNine · Posted: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:34:04 Post Subject:

Relevance-> They have an algorithm to determine how what pages go in what order. Plus, the more popular a page is (the more it's clicked) the higher the popularity modifier is.

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:42:25 Post Subject:

See... but that doesn't work then... How does a page with 2500 views total qualify to be the #1 worldwide result for the search term "fan controller". I have to imagine there are more popular / relevant pages. Know what I mean? Same with the netdisk example... My page is more popular / relevant than the manufacturers? Or a review that probably had more than the 6000 views mine did?

trekrider · Posted: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:48:15 Post Subject:

Maybe they feel bad about the advertizing???

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:51:17 Post Subject:

- doubt it! I'm surpised the site shows up in the results at all!!

IceNine · Posted: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 15:53:34 Post Subject:

IceNine · Posted: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:00:35 Post Subject:

http://www.google.com/technology/

http://www.google.com/about.html

**Doctor Feelgood** · Posted: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 16:11:24 Post Subject:

I mention page views to point out that in the global scheme of things it isn't very popular. 2500 is nothing. Maybe fan controllers aren't as common of a search term as I may be thinking, but it seems odd that such a 'small' page could climb to the top at Google, when I know that at least 2000 or more views came from sites other than Google

Red Squirrel · Posted: Wed, 14 Jan 2004 18:09:02 Post Subject:

The links are direct so they can't know how many people click them, but what they use is relevance and keyword order (ex: fan controller vs controller fan makes a slight difference).

It also goes by how many other sites link to it. Type in "turing forums" with no quotes and you get my site, and it's because someone posted a turing question and it's an old language and there's probably nothing out there on turing, now I keep getting people hoping to get help with it. Thankgoodness I have one member who knows a bit of turing.

There's also this thread ndisuio.sys and it's ranked super high because lot of forums link to it because it seems to be a common problem that it downloads tons of data on winxp. Type ndisuio or even .sys downloading and get that thread. There's at least 10 people that are viewing that every day. It has like 12000 views and it all comes from google, it's crazy!