Search engine techniques are the methods by which a user can refine the information that is returned for a search query. While every database and search engine is a little bit different there are some general techniques that can be used no matter the system. These techniques can help the user get better and more targeted results.

The first step in searching for anything online is to determine what keywords are important. These can be single words or phrases and are a great way to narrow down the search results and avoid information overload. This can also save a lot of time and resources.

Using the search engines search suggestions is another great way to find new search terms to try. These will appear as you are typing and can be selected with arrow keys on the keyboard. You can also use quotation marks around search terms to narrow down your results even more. For example, searching for recipes “sugar cookies” will only return recipe pages that have that exact phrase. This can be helpful when trying to find specific types of documents like PDFs, videos or images.

Once a keyword is entered the search engine looks for this information in a predefined database instead of going out to search the web. This database is known as an index and works similar to a library where the librarian can pull books off of shelves for you rather than you having to walk the entire library to find what you are looking for.

A number of algorithms are analyzed by the search engine to determine what type of information is relevant for a particular query. This can include looking at the frequency of the keyword in the content, how it is placed on the page, and what other sites are linking to it. This helps the search engine know what is important and if it is worth ranking highly.

Then the search engine takes into account a large number of other factors and signals to decide what order to put pages in for a given query. This is where things can become a bit confusing because the number of signals and factors is really too much for any human to understand. This is why there has been a whole science developed that helps websites optimize for these signals so they can rank higher in search results.

It is important to keep in mind that these tricks may only work for a short period of time. Search engine developers will eventually catch on to these gimmicks and penalize sites that try to game the system by using advanced SEO techniques. If the search engine doesn’t catch you then someone else will. There are also a number of other ways to search the web more efficiently like searching for specific file types or finding cached pages on certain sites. This is why it is important to learn and apply the basic search engine techniques.