Illustrated below is a mocked up diagram to show the typical life span of a query when a Google search is performed. At the start point a query is submitted through Google and proceeds to be processed:-
- Stage 1 – the query is sent to the Google web server to start processing the request.
- Stage 2 – the Google web server then sends the query to the index servers. Possibly the best analogy would be to describe the index servers as being very much like an index we’d find at the end of a book. The index servers further process the query and find pages that best contain the words that match the query.
- Stage 3 – the doc servers retrieve the correct stored results and pushes them back to the final stage.
- Stage 4 – the end Google user accesses the results queried, searched and retrieved.
Understanding how a page is retrieved and presented to the end user gives great insight to anyone involved in SEO. Most critical is stage 1 where webpages must be fully optimised to ensure that they are indexed correctly. SEO comes to the fore here using tried an tested techniques like webpage optimisation – ensuring title tags, ALT tags, website structure and crawlability – are working to their best effect. Bolt on effective use of keywords, loads of rich and informative content and your webpage is well positioned to travel down the query life cycle. A typical query takes a fraction of a second – prepare well and you’ll prosper.