Ask a question, get an answer. But what happens in between? Last year we released an animated site that illustrates an email's journey to friends and family around the world. Today we're releasing a similar website called How Search Works.



Here you can follow the entire life of a search query, from the web, to crawling and indexing, to algorithmic ranking and serving, to fighting webspam. The site complements existing resources, including this blog, the help center, user forums, Webmaster Tools, and in-depth research papers.

A few things you'll find:
  • An interactive, graphical explanation of Google Search
  • A view into major search algorithms and features
  • A 43-page document explaining how we evaluate our results
  • A live slideshow of spam as we remove it
  • Graphs illustrating the spam problem and how we fight it
  • A list of policies that explain when we'll remove content
We hope the site helps to illuminate the split-second journey from algorithms to answers. The animated site is available today in English and there's also a text-only version in 43 languages.

Posted by Jake Hubert, Product Manager