There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example:  Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

Robert Shaw is an SEO marketing expert. He also offers top quality tips about contact lenses and plastic packaging.

Hmmmm, this is a big concept and I need to emphasise it’s not clear cut. But here is what I have learned in my work at the Backlinks clinic:

Authority – explained

The more authority your web pages have the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that people trust you and your information. The great news is that authorities trusted by humans are also trusted by Google. A great example is the .edu and .gov domain extensions. These domains imply they are credible sources of information and it’s a proven fact that in the eyes of Google backlinks from these web addresses to your web pages will contribute authority to your web pages. Another good example is Wikipedia as the contents here are mostly added by by tribes of people as opposed to a single person.

So it follows that authority is largely influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative sites link to you then you inherit their apparent trust and as far as Google is concerned you become more authoritative and so the trust in your web pages by Google increases.

How Google determines what is and isn’t authoritative is undisclosed for good reason and aligns with Google’s philosophy of “Do no evil”. The last thing the Internet needs is someone exploiting the methods that Google employs in its efforts to try and bring some order to probably the most important technological resource of our times.

How not to get Authority and Backlinks

And on this thought it’s worth my while stating some obvious sources and practices of creating backlinks that Google not only dislikes but appears to be moving aggressively to ‘classify’ as negative authorities. In no particular order of severity, the common examples are:

• Paid backlinks – hubs where people buy and sell backlinks
• Comment spam – entries that contain links on web pages that are just not related to the main content.
• Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or otherwise
• Fast growth – there are a large selection of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden increase in the amount of backlinks is going to show up on Google’s monitoring systems, specifically if it’s a brand new domain.
• Backlinks from unscrupulous web pages – these are particularly nasty as you are guilty by association – need I say more.

*There is another factor where I may be on shakey ground, but reputable press properties appear to get a lot of authority and I have definitely discovered significant numbers of the same content over and over again on different portals with no penalties, I am still monitoring this, only as a percentage of the results I am seeing defy the consistent behaviors I usually expect to see. More on this is in a future article….

OK, this is a big concept and I need to emphasise it’s not clear cut. But here is what I know in my work at the Backlinks clinic:

Authority – simplified

The more authority your site has the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that people trust you and your content. The great news is that authorities trusted by humans are also trusted by Google. A great example is the .edu and .gov domain extensions. These domains imply they are authoratitive sources of information and it’s a proven fact that in the eyes of Google backlinks from these domains to your site will send authority to your web pages. Another shining example is Wikipedia as the web pages here are largely added by by group of humans as opposed to a single marketer.

So it follows that authority is significantly influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative web pages link to you then you receive their influence and in the eyes of Google you become more authoritative and hence the trust in your web pages by Google goes up.

How Google decides what is and isn’t authoritative is a guarded secret for good reason and falls in line with Google’s philosophy of “Do no evil”. The last thing the web needs is someone exploiting the mechanisms that Google employs in its efforts to try and regulate probably the most significant technological resource of this period in history.

Backlinking methods you should avoid

And on this thought it’s worth my while stating some underhand sources and practices of creating backlinks that Google not only disapproves of but appears to be acting to ‘’categorize as illegitimate authorities. In no particular order of merit, the prime examples are:

• Paid backlinks – web pages where individuals buy and sell backlinks
• Comment spam – entries that contain links on web pages that are just not associated to the main theme.
• Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or copied
• Unnatural growth – there are a myriad of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden rise in the number of backlinks is going to register on Google’s monitoring systems, especially if it’s a brand new domain.
• Backlinks from unscrupulous sites – these are particularly destructive as you are guilty by association – need I say more.

*There is another factor where I may be on shakey ground, but key media portals seem to get a lot of authority and I have definitely seen significant numbers of the same article over and over again on different web sites with no penalties, I am still monitoring this, only as a percentage of the results I am seeing defy the consistent behaviors I normally expect to see. More on this is in a future article….