how search really works

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works. Previously: Relevance (1) Another way we can assess the relevance of a document is by term weighting. From the keyword density myth we know that true term weighting [...]

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works. Last week: The Compressed Index. While human beings can scan a page and see if the whole phrase "a grandiloquent dictionary" appears on it, a search engine can't. [...]

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works. Last week: Recognize this index? Memory is much faster than looking things up. In order for a search engine in high demand to serve its users efficiently it [...]

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works. Last week: "The" Index (1). Last week we saw how an inverted index (where a list of words points to a list of documents in which they appear) [...]

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works. Previous Instalment: The Keyword Density Myth. If a search engine would search "live" through the documents it knows about for the occurrence of the word we're looking for [...]

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works. Last week: Keyword Stuffing. What is Keyword Density? Keyword Density is a function, a calculation, of keyword frequency. It's calculated as number of occurrences divided by number of [...]

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works. Last week: Keyword Links. Left to their own devices, people will assign keywords (tag or link) as they please. They paint a rich picture of the linked content. [...]

This post is part of an ongoing series: How Search Really Works. Last week: Meta Keywords. A web page can only have a limited number of words -- but can receive an unlimited number of links.   It's not rare [...]