How do Search Engines work?

We use them everyday but how many of you really understand how search engines work? Most of us probably don't even think about it, we just click that button and wait for the results to show up. We take for granted the real "magic" that goes on behind the scenes, in milliseconds, after we press the search button.

There are search spiders that crawl through the world wide web in search of new content, information and websites twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. The spiders crawl a webpage and index its content for quick and easy retrieval when a user searches for it. These intelligent littler digital insects keep track of all sorts of information on the page, like the title tag, all of the headings on the page, the links on the page and where they go, and much much more. So when you search for "Web Design Studios" the search engines check all the webpages its' spiders have indexed and analyze those important areas of the page against your search terms. So a website with the phrase "Web Design Studios" in its title tag, headings and links is more likely to show up in your search.

So why then do some pages show up first in the results rather then others? The spiders don't just look at what your content is, they also look to see how many people are already using your site. They do this in a number of ways. First off a site that has content posted where you can leave comments generates a lot of dynamic content that the spiders can sense, almost like a heat map. The spiders also check to see how many other pages out there link to yours, because if someone links to your site they must view your site as important. This all accumulates into a stat that we refer to as "page authority". Essentially the higher your results on a google search the more of an authority the page is on the subject that was searched for.

Fun SEO Fact #1Did you know that nearly 80% of internet users will not look past the first page of search results? They will either try to find the information they want from the first page of results because they trust that those pages are the most accurate, or they will try a new search term or attempt the same search on a different website. If your website isn't listed in the top page of results the amount of organic traffic you can generate is effectively 0

Did you know that there are a lot of built in functions in the Google search engine? Try typing in a math problem like "5 * 5" and the first thing you'll see is a Google calculator result with the answer. You can even type in something crazy like 5^5 X 5 + 25 (the ^ symbol means that the following number is an exponent).

By default Google searches for each word in your search phrase on the websites in its index. So if you type in "Ez web secrets, blog" the search engine will search for the words Ez, Web, Secrets and finally blog. It will return the top results as the sites that have all four words in them, but you will also get results with only three or less matches in it. In order to specify a string that you want to be exact you place "" around the string. For example, if i wanted to search for the best winery in France I would type "the best winery in France".

You can also combine these methods, say I wanted to search for the best winery in France, but I wanted results relevant to the city of Paris. I could type ' "The best winery in France", Paris ' and the first results on the page would be those closest to Paris.

You can also use Google to search within your favorite sites. By specifying the site: parameter you are telling Google to look only at pages indexed at that location. for example: "Site:www.facebook.com The Studio Bee" will search Facebook for all profiles matching the search criteria "The studio bee".

I hope that this little bit of fun education has given you a little bit more knowledge about how search engines work. If you enjoyed this, have any questions or remarks please post a comment below and like and share this post with your friends.

The Truth About Flash

We all love the animation and user experience power of flash, but there might be some things you don't know about it. Don't get me wrong, it has its uses and the possibilities it allows you to achieve are pretty staggering. However sometimes the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. Lets go over some of those drawbacks

• First off did you know that it is nearly impossible to guarantee that everyone everywhere will be able to even see the content within a flash application? If you built your entire site on flash and your viewers don't have the latest flash plugin installed then they don't get to see the website at all. You put time and effort into creating that wonderful animated site and then a small fraction of your users don't even get to see it. Sounds like a waste of time to me.
  
• Search engines can't even see the content within a flash application. Search Engine Optimization is an important factor in today's marketplace. We have to make sure that the search engine crawlers get to our site, index all the pages, and retrieve information about our site that is easy for users to find. Well unless you plan on using some black hat CSS tricks to serve up two different versions of the site (one to bots and one to human viewers) then your entire site just looks blank to the search engines. Black Hat refers to a hacker who is using unscrupulous methods to achieve his goal. You definitely don't want to use black hat hacks...do you?
  
• Flash applications can be made into Content Management Systems, however this is typically more difficult to do and requires a great Flash Programmer. Whereas those of us building straight HTML website can utilize already existing CMS software to save you Time and Money over the competition. EZ Web Secrets is all about saving you Time and Money, and we plan on teaching you how to utilize Joomla, Wordpress and other pre-existing CMS softwares to build your site quickly and efficiently without falling into any of these "flash pitfalls".
  

There aren't a lot of negatives, but each bullet point is a big reason not to use Flash. I don't use it my coding simply because I am a SEO nazi, and I don't like anything that can't be indexed by the search engines. However I still can produce quality animated content by utilizing the jQuery Javascript library. jQuery allows me to animate html elements in a lot of the same ways that Flash does. With Flash you typically have a visual editor, but with jQuery you have to know how to code to make things happen the way you want them to. Considering I can read code better then some people can read english, it works for me.

What are your thoughts and opinions on Flash? let me know in the comments section below.

Welcome to EZ Web Secrets

This new blog brought to you by The Studio Bee is intended to be a resource of tips and tricks, as well as a place to show off a few of our experiments in web design. We are going to fill this blog with information that will help you make the most out of your web experience, as well as to increase the value of your website designs. Everyone these days uses the internet but a fair portion of those users don't really get the most they can out of the internet. With as many different browsers, plugins, applications, websites and countless other web-orientated objects out there, its no surprise that a majority of us aren't aware of all of them.

That's where EZ Web Secrets will come in! We try out everything and we will pass along the best to you. This first post is going to discuss a free-to-use Google application that can replace your entire suite of office applications. Google Docs is an amazing web based application that allows you to create word documents, spread sheets, presentations and more. These documents are saved online to your Google account and can be accessed anywhere. No more worrying if you have your important documents backed up in case of an emergency, Google docs stores everything "in the cloud" for easy access anytime, anywhere. 

The number one complaint, or excuse, we hear from people when we tell them about Google docs is "but my job requires me to use (application)". No need to worry about that, Google docs will allow you to download a physical copy of your document in almost any format available including Microsoft Word. 

The fun doesn't stop there, though! Google docs allows you to share your documents with other users who can then also edit and update them at their leisure. It is entertaining to watch multiple cursors moving around a Google word document and typing simultaneously. This can be a very handy tool for work from home type individuals who need to organize their efforts!

If you have an Android device this application becomes ten times better! Google Docs can be downloaded from the Android Market and you have instant access to your documents at all times from your mobile device. The documents look great on your standard screen sizes, but its even better on the seven to ten inch tablets!

We hope that this little tip will get you excited about the things to come from EZ Web Secrets and keep you coming back for more!