Sells in this field
How Search Engine Indexing Works?
Search engine indexing is broken into crawling, indexing and ranking, followed by ways to control what gets indexed so that content is found.
Topic
How search works
5 videos.
What decides the order of results on a search page? In short, an engine finds pages, stores them and sorts them for each query. Google keeps most of the detail private, so the talks here explain the broad steps rather than the exact recipe.
How Search Engine Indexing Works? is the beginner pick. Its maker, Rank Math, sells SEO tools. Google staff appear in SMX West 2016 - How Google Works, where Gary Illyes and Paul Haahr explain how ranking decisions are made. In a live session from 2020, Martin Splitt takes questions on crawling and indexing. Google's own videos from 2011 and 2012 include a weekly search quality meeting and a panel of long-serving search leaders. Read them as history, not as a description of search today.
Trade press or conference
Google's Martin Splitt on how the search engine crawls and indexes - Live with Search Engine Land
How Google crawls and indexes pages is the topic as Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land puts live questions to Martin Splitt of Google about the technical side of search.
Older: check current guidanceTrade press or conference
SMX West 2016 - How Google Works: A Google Ranking Engineer's Story
Google ranking and algorithm changes get explained by Gary Illyes and Paul Haahr, who take an SMX West audience through how those decisions are made.
Older: check current guidanceOfficial source
Search Quality Meeting: Spelling for Long Queries (Annotated)
Spelling correction for long queries gets a full airing in this Google weekly meeting from December 2011, which includes one proposed algorithm change.
Older: check current guidanceOfficial source
Inside Google's Search Office (hosted by the Churchill Club)
Three long-serving Google search leaders look back on how the engine works, how they built it together and where it could head, in a panel chaired by Danny Sullivan.
Older: check current guidance
