Introduction to Search
Sithira Nandula
Manager Digital Strategy – Neo@Ogilvy
MBA (PIM-SJP), Bsc. Marketing Management (Special) (SJP),
CPM, PGDip (M) SL, AMSLIM
Why people search?
• To find a particular website
• To find some information/research
• To find a product for their need
• To find recommendations/suggestions
• To find a place
• To find a person, to know more about a person
• Even to check spelling
Pretty much for everything!
Have you ever done a search about yourself?
What is a search engine?
It’s possible to think of the internet as the
world’s biggest library. Imagine being in such a
vast library. It would take forever to find what
you were looking for!
Every library has an index to help you track
down the book you want. The internet has
something similar in the form of search
engines.
The purpose of a search engine
1.Crawling and Indexing
• Through links,search engines’ automated robots,called“crawlers,” or“spiders”
can reach the many billions of interconnected documents. Once the engines find
these pages, they decipher the code and store select pieces in massive hard drives,
to be recalled later.
2.RetrievingAnswers
•When you perform a search, search engines scour the billions of stored
documents and do two things – first, return those results that are the most
relevant to your query, and second, rank those results in order of perceived
importance.
What are the search engines that you are aware of?
What are the search engines that you are aware of?
Search engine market share
Google dominates by 93%
Bing 2%
Yahoo 1.6%
Baidu 0.83%
Yandex 0.55%
Why Google?
Google’s mission is to organize the
world’s information and make
it universally accessible and useful.
How Google search works?
Every time you search, there are
thousands, sometimes millions, of
webpages with helpful information. How
Google figures out which results to show
starts long before you even type, and is
guided by a commitment to you to
provide the best information
How Google search works? – Is there a person behind it?
How Google search works? – If Google was a guy
How Google search works?
How search algorithms works
• With the amount of information
available on the web, finding
what you need would be nearly
impossible without some help
sorting through it. Google
ranking systems are designed to
do just that.
Key factors that determine which results are returned for your query
• Meaning of your query
• Relevance of webpages
• Quality of content
• Usability of webpages
• Context and settings
Meaning of your query
• Google first need to establish what
information you’re looking for the
intent behind your query
• This involves steps as seemingly
simple as interpreting spelling
mistakes, and extends to trying to
understand the type of query you’ve
entered
• Google tries to understand what
category of information you are
looking for. Is it a very specific search
or a broad query?
Relevance of webpages
• The most basic signal that
information is relevant is when a
webpage contains the same
keywords as your search query
• If those keywords appear on the
page, or if they appear in the
headings or body of the text, the
information is more likely to be
relevant
Quality of content
• Beyond matching the words in your
query with relevant documents on
the web, Search algorithms also aim
to prioritize the most reliable sources
available
• Google looks for sites that many
users seem to value for similar
queries
• Spam algorithms play an important
role in establishing whether a page is
low-quality and help Search ensure
that sites don’t rise in search results
Usability of webpages
• Google Search also evaluates
whether webpages are easy to use
• These algorithms analyze signals
that indicate whether all our users
are able to view the result,] he
• whether site appears correctly in
different browsers;
• whether it is designed for all device
types and sizes
• whether the page loading times
work well for users with slow
Internet connections.
Context and settings
• Information such as your location, past
Search history and Search settings all help
us to tailor your results to what is most
useful and relevant for you in that
moment.
• Google personalizes your results using
information about your recent Search
activity
“Perfect search engine would
understand exactly what you mean
and give you back exactly what you
want”
Larry Page – CEO Google
How does Google give you exactly what you want
How people interact with search engines
• Navigational Queries
• Navigational searches are performed with the intent of surfing directly to a specific
website.
• Informational Queries
• Informational searches are primarily non-transaction-oriented; information itself is
the goal and no interaction beyond clicking and reading is required.
• Transactional Queries
• Transactional searches don’t necessarily require a purchase to be made. Signing up
for a free trial or requesting a pamphlet are considered transactional.
When visitors type a query into a search box and land on our site, will they
be satisfied with what they find?
Google trends
Google Trends is a website by Google
that analyzes the popularity of top
search queries in Google Search
across various regions and languages.
The website uses graphs to compare
the search volume of different
queries over time.
Google trends use in business case
• How do people search for your
brand? When do searches spike?
What about your competitors?
•
• The Google Trends tool uses real-
time search data to help you gauge
consumer search behaviors over www.google.com/trends
time.
Year in search 2019
Search engine marketing
Promotion of a product or
service by increasing their visibility
in search engine results pages
through optimization (SEO) and
advertising (PPC)
Paid search vs. Organic search
Paid
search
Organic
search
How to get SEO done for your website in a nutshell
Getting your content to rank highly in search results depends
predominantly on two things: One, improving discovery and relevance
by creating lots of high-quality content on the topics you want to be
known for; and two, building authority by getting lots of high quality
backlinks to your website
A healthy SEO approach balances building relevancy with building authority
Evolution of SEO
First Signs Of Life (1991 – 2002) • In this primitive stage of SEO, anything
goes. Marketers would leverage
keyword stuffing, excessive tagging,
and (often spammy) backlinks to
generate high rankings in search.
The Early Days (2003 – 2005) • Search engines offered a first glimpse at
personalized search based on user history. The
birth of local SEO helped connect users with
valuable information near them such as maps,
locations, store hours, and mobile results.
Marketing focused heavily on generating
inbound links to increase search exposure.
The Middle Ages (2006 – 2009) • Google Suggest was launched to
improve usability and offer users more
relevant content by displaying
suggested search options based on
historical data. Marketers began
optimizing new content media for
search to increase exposure
The Enlightenment (2010 – 2012) • Major updates from Google enforced
stricter regulations on keywords, content
quality, and over-optimization. To
successfully optimize a website, marketers
developed valuable and shareable content
focused toward users.
The Modern Ages (2013 – Present) • Today, we find ourselves at a
crossroads. There is an apparent
struggle between personalization
and privacy. Today, websites lacking
mobile optimization or responsive
design have lost search visibility in
Google.
Future of search
Future of search
Artificial intelligence is changing how search is done
23% 30%
of people used voice
of all browsing sessions
search or voice
will include voice search
command at least once
by 2020 **
a day in 2018*
* Source: Higher Visibility, 2019
** Source: Gartner, 2018
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In a context where voice
searches are becoming more
“ O K Google, how can I drive
and more important and that
sales from voice searches?” people use voice assistants to
purchase, there is an
opportunity for brands to
convert this into sales.
Walmart customers now can order through Google Assistant
Google Assistant hack by Burger King
Thank you
