On a single line: They use folders. Going into more detail, when you start typing "How do I" then you get inside the folder "H" that is proceeded by a sub folder "o" then a sub folder "w" and so on. Spaces and special symbols like "-" or "." don't count here. On each of these folders you find pointers (or links if you prefer to keep the file system analogy) that are literally millions per folder and get be repeated over and over again across as many folders as needed. On the attributes for each pointer is where the ranking is kept. Since they are all pointers to a unique resource, the ranking of this resource is therefore noted across the whole system and this is reflected on the sorting of all these pointers (links) on each folder where they are present. I know it is hard to think on a file system that would keep such a high number of files, it really is something simple nowadays to achieve even on your desktop. Just google for Hadoop and try it out on your machine if you wish. These pointers don't appear magically, they are created by analysis of previous queries and which clicks users selected before with some more gimmick to prevent spamdexing where possible. Night and day you see crawlers, bots and miners correlating data and deciding which links should be created and where. Very seldom will a user query require the use of a relational database (like the sorts of MySQL), the standard policy is to say that exist no results (indexed yet) and then point the user to some alternative results computed by a natural language interpreter that attempts to convey a similar/alternative option. I hope this helps. Don't ask where this info comes from, it would take some time, several academical papers and plenty of beer to understand the beauty of all this.
I think you're the first person I've seen that has a legit, intelligent answer to the "How Google Works" question, well done.
Google purely work on content part, what ever content you put that google taken into consideration when someone search related.
Nuno, that was actually a great insight. I've only ever looked at Google's algorithm from the ranking point of view, but I've never even bothered to ask "how does it work" on that level. Very interesting. As far as the question goes, is that what you were looking for, or were you looking for a more "optimization" and "how to get ranked" answer?
Nuno, you have made this question clear and meaningful, like most of us, I have never think about it deeply, it is a shame. It's important we should try to know more if we want to win, you set a good example for us.
I agree! I have done research as well. Google is like Windows Explorer in terms of search querying. The algorithms are just priority functions.