What is search engine marketing? We do it all the time yet how often do we think about the behind the scenes process. The process is complex, yet simple. There’s allot we don’t see that goes on behind the scenes of search engines. Let me attempt to describe the process in simple terms.
Search engine marketing captures the conversation going on inside the head of a person looking online for a product. Keywords and phrases are the language that communicates to the search engine where they want to go. The blinking cursor in the search box is waiting for words. “Tell me what you want?” In short, search engine marketing captures intent.
And how often does this happen every hour of every day? Lots. The following stats from searchengineland.com tells it all:
- 34,000 searches per second happen on Google
- 2 million per minute
- 121 million per hour
- 280 million per day
- 88 billion per month
Remarkably, the above numbers do not include Bing or Yahoo!
Thus, take all the millions of searches and think about what all the search engines do with this information. It just doesn’t end up in a digital black hole. It’s a continuous process.
All the searches are saved and indexed into data bases that organize and make sense of all these “conversations.” Algorithms, or highly advanced computer programs take these phrases and search records and patterns, learn from them, and then add relevant key words and phrases to their databases. In short, search engines learn the language of what people are looking for via typed words and phrases.
Google does a great job explaining the basic concept:
So in essence, a search engine marketing creates a database that organizes and indexes search words and phrases entered into search engines. It then tries to connect the dots of all those searches so users can find the information and website they need.
By Stuart Atkins
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