How do search engines work? Google, Bing, and others

If you want to understand SEO from the ground up, you first need to know how search engines work. Google, Bing, and their competitors are software systems with three clearly separated jobs: searching the web, storing the content, and sorting the best-matching results for every query. This article explains how that works step by step, puts the most important ranking factors in context, and shows what AI search is changing right now. The focus is on the Austrian B2B market.

Why search engine mechanics matter for businesses

Search engines are the main entry point to the web. In Austria, by far the largest share goes to a single provider: Google holds a search engine market share of 80.88 percent, ahead of Bing with 10.93 percent, Yahoo with 2.68 percent, and DuckDuckGo with 2.37 percent (as of September 2026, all devices). If you want to be found in Austria, you are in practice optimizing for Google, without losing sight of the alternatives entirely.

Reach is close to universal. In early 2025, 8.69 million people in Austria used the internet, an online penetration of 95.3 percent. The global volume shows the scale: Google now handles more than 5 trillion searches per year (international figure, reported by Google itself). For B2B providers, this means that most purchase research, supplier comparisons, and first contacts start with a search query. If you understand how the machine behind it makes its decisions, you can influence your visibility deliberately instead of relying on luck.

The three core processes: crawling, indexing, and ranking

Every classic search engine goes through three phases. They interlock, but you can separate them cleanly.

• Crawling: An automated program, Googlebot in Google's case, fetches web pages and follows the links on each page to the next one. This is how the crawler works its way through the web from document to document. It uses a crawl budget to manage which pages it visits and how often. Site owners steer access through the robots.txt file and meta directives. Google has completed the switch to mobile-first indexing and crawls primarily with Googlebot Smartphone, which is why the mobile version of a page is what counts.
• Indexing: The crawled content is analyzed, processed, and stored in a huge database, the index. This step decides whether a page is eligible for search results at all. Control signals are widespread: according to the Web Almanac 2024, 69 percent of desktop pages use a canonical tag and 45.5 percent a meta robots tag, while only 4.7 percent of desktop pages use noindex (international analysis). The canonical tag consolidates signals across duplicates, and noindex excludes a page from the index.
• Ranking and serving: When someone enters a search query, the search engine sorts the matching documents from the index by relevance in a fraction of a second. The result is the ordered list of results, the search engine results page (SERP). A ranking is not a fixed value. It is recalculated for every query and depends on factors such as the search term, language, location, and device.

Anatomy of a SERP: what users actually see

A modern SERP is far more than ten blue links. It is a composite layout of several elements that compete for attention.

• Organic results: The regular, unpaid listings. Their position is determined by the ranking algorithm alone.
• Ads (SEA): Paid results from Google Ads, usually above and below the organic results and labeled as ads. They follow their own auction logic, not the organic ranking.
• Featured snippets: Highlighted answer boxes that show an excerpt from a page right at the top, such as a definition or a list.
• Knowledge panel: An information box about entities such as companies, people, or places, fed by Google's Knowledge Graph.
• AI Overviews: For many queries, Google puts an AI-generated summary answer at the top. Google AI Overviews reach 2 billion monthly users, up from 1.5 billion in May 2025 (international figure). This box pushes the organic results further down and changes click behavior.

Your SERP position is commercially decisive. According to an international analysis of around 4 million Google search results, the result in position 1 gets an average organic click-through rate of 27.6 percent. Moving from page two to page one, especially into the top spots, is therefore the most effective lever of all.

Ranking factors at a glance

Google does not publish a complete list but refers to more than 200 signals. They fall into four groups.

• Relevance and content: How well a page answers the search intent behind the query. Depth of content, topical coverage, and a match with what users are really looking for form the basis. A technically perfect site without matching content does not rank.
• Backlinks: Links from other websites act like recommendations and have always been among the strongest signals. An international analysis of 11.8 million search results shows that the result in position 1 has on average 3.8 times more backlinks than positions 2 to 10, and around 95 percent of all pages have no backlinks at all. The quality and topical proximity of the linking sites count for more than sheer volume.
• Technical SEO: Crawlability, indexability, a clean site structure, correct canonicals, and structured data ensure that search engines can capture content in the first place and classify it correctly.
• User signals and page experience: How people interact with a result and how usable the page is technically both feed into the ranking. This includes the Core Web Vitals as measurable metrics for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability, as well as mobile usability. According to the Web Almanac 2024, 94 percent of mobile pages pass the Lighthouse check for the viewport meta tag, but only 48 percent of mobile pages achieve good Core Web Vitals (international analysis). That leaves measurable potential untapped.

E-E-A-T: why trust matters especially in B2B

E-E-A-T is not a direct ranking factor. It is an evaluation framework from Google's Quality Rater Guidelines, which human raters use to check the quality of the ranking systems. The acronym has been expanded: in December 2022, E-A-T became E-E-A-T, with the extra E standing for Experience, meaning first-hand experience (Google Search Central). The four pillars are Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

E-E-A-T becomes especially important for so-called YMYL topics (Your Money or Your Life) that concern health, finances, or major business decisions. This is exactly where a lot of B2B content sits. In practice, E-E-A-T is built through clearly named authors with verifiable expertise, cited sources, real-world examples, transparent company information, and a consistent reputation across the web. For Austrian providers, this also includes a complete legal notice (Impressum) and verifiable references.

White-hat vs. black-hat SEO

You can tell SEO practices apart by whether they follow Google's guidelines. White-hat SEO works long term and within the rules: high-quality content, a clean technical setup, earned backlinks, and a good user experience. These methods carry no inherent risk of a penalty.

Black-hat SEO tries to manipulate the algorithm. This includes keyword stuffing, hidden text, cloaking (showing different content to users and crawlers), and purchased link networks. Such tactics violate Google's spam policies. The consequences range from algorithmic demotion to manual actions (penalties) that can set a site back significantly or remove it from the index entirely. In B2B, where reputation and reliability count, the risk-reward ratio of such methods is clearly negative. Gray-hat SEO forms a gray area: it operates at the edge of the guidelines and can quickly turn into a problem when they change.

SEO vs. SEA: when each pays off in B2B

SEO and SEA (search engine advertising, i.e., paid search) pursue the same goal, visibility in search, with different logic.

• SEO (organic): Works in the medium to long term, builds a lasting asset, and has no cost per click. Building it takes months, but the effect lasts and becomes more cost-efficient over time.
• SEA (paid): Delivers visibility immediately, can be adjusted at any time, and is precisely measurable, but you pay per click and the visibility ends as soon as the budget runs out. Ideal for quick tests, product launches, and highly competitive keywords.

In B2B, the two often complement each other. SEA is well suited to validating new offers quickly and capturing demand in niches, while SEO forms the lasting foundation for a steady flow of leads. Because B2B buying processes are long and consultative, building organic authority through informative content pays off especially well. A sensible strategy uses SEA for speed and control and SEO for substance and efficiency.

History of Google and major algorithm updates

The way search works today is the result of decades of development. A few milestones explain why quality matters so much now.

• PageRank (1998): Google's founding principle rated pages by the number and quality of incoming links and made search much more relevant.
• Panda (2011): Targeted sites with thin or copied content and gave content quality more weight.
• Penguin (2012): Cracked down on unnatural link profiles and purchased links.
• Hummingbird (2013): Brought a better understanding of whole queries instead of individual keywords.
• RankBrain (2015): Brought machine learning into ranking so that unfamiliar queries could be interpreted as well.
• BERT (2019): Improved language understanding in context, especially for longer, naturally phrased queries.
• Helpful Content Update (2022) and core updates: Put helpful content written for people first. The regular core updates broadly readjust the evaluation and reward substance.

The direction is clear: with every update, it became harder to rank with tricks and more important to actually help searchers.

Other search engines: Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Ecosia

It pays to look beyond Google too, especially because several alternatives draw on other providers' indexes.

• Bing and Copilot: Microsoft's search engine runs its own index and crawler (Bingbot) and is closely tied to the AI assistant Copilot. In Austria, Bing is the clear number two with 10.93 percent market share (September 2026).
• DuckDuckGo: Focuses on privacy and does without tracking and personalized profiles. Its results come largely from the Bing index, supplemented by its own sources. In Austria, its market share is 2.37 percent (September 2026).
• Ecosia: The Berlin-based search engine invests advertising revenue in reforestation and is known in the DACH region as a sustainable alternative. Its results come from Microsoft Bing, Google, and the European index EUSP. Bing is available to all users, Google only in certain regions and browsers. Which provider answers depends on location, device, and cookie consent. According to Ecosia, EUSP has supplied part of the results in France since August 2025 and in Germany as well since July 30, 2026.

In practice, DuckDuckGo's dependence on Bing means that if you are well indexed in Bing, you are usually visible there too. For Ecosia, this applies to every search that Bing answers. Ignoring Bing would therefore be shortsighted.

GEO and AI search: how ChatGPT, Perplexity, and others choose

AI search systems add a new layer. ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude deliver a synthesized answer instead of a list of links. Technically, they often build on classic search: they retrieve sources through crawling and indexes and synthesize an answer from them, often with citations. AI use is growing fast, for example through Google's AI Mode with more than 100 million monthly active users in the US and India (international figure).

This has given rise to the discipline of generative engine optimization (GEO): optimizing content so that it gets cited in AI-generated answers. A scientific study shows that GEO can increase visibility in generative search answers by up to 40 percent (academic study, KDD 2024). What works is clearly structured, fact-based content with unambiguous definitions, sourced statistics, and quotable statements. This is exactly where classic SEO and GEO overlap: both reward substance and structure. For the DACH region, this means preparing content so that both Google and AI systems recognize it as a reliable source.

SEO strategy basics for beginners

If you are starting out with SEO, tackle four building blocks in this order.

• Keyword research: Find out which terms and questions your target audience in Austria actually searches for, and sort them by search intent (informational, commercial, transactional).
• On-page optimization: Structure content with clear titles, meaningful headings, precise metadata, and logical internal linking. Every page should serve one clear search intent.
• Technical foundation: Make sure your pages are crawlable, load fast, work on mobile, and have clean canonicals, and that indexing is controlled correctly. Without this foundation, good content goes to waste.
• Measuring success: Use Google Search Console to track impressions, clicks, average position, and indexing status. Web analytics adds data on behavior and conversions.

Further reading and conclusion

Search engines follow a principle you can trace: crawl, index, rank. Once you understand these three steps, you also see why technically clean, substantive, and trustworthy pages win. The ranking factors boil down to a few levers: relevance, backlinks, technical SEO, and user experience. E-E-A-T shows that trust feeds measurably into the evaluation. AI search and GEO add a synthesis layer that rewards the same quality principles.

Sensible next steps are keyword research focused on the Austrian market, a basic technical check in Google Search Console, and deliberately building quotable content for Google and AI systems alike.