What Search Engine Rankings Mean

Undoubtedly, you are familiar with search engines, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo. You always wonder why the results of your search end up in the order in which they appear to you. Who or what determines which ones appear first? Try to figure this out and you might get a headache from all the answers you can find out there. Read on for a few ideas on search engine outcomes and rankings.

About 11,300,000 results (0.10 seconds)

What does this mean? Usually it signifies the amount of time a particular search engine takes to produce results that match what it "thinks" you might mean. For this reason, you need as much specificity as you can muster when typing in your search criteria. From there, the search engine lists all results with the most relevant ones to your unique search listed first. This does not necessarily mean that the first page or pages of results prove most helpful to you. Sometimes you need to refine your query and start again until things start looking the way they should.

Other contributing factors

The keywords used in your search can also cause certain listings to appear on result pages. If your keyword appears many times on a web page or near the top of a web page, then that page might appear in search results before others. The popularity of certain results may cause them to reappear more often as well.

Here are just a few ideas on the meaning of search engine rankings and why you find the results you do when you initiate a search. Artificial intelligence as well as keywords play major roles in what you find on your result pages.