When you search for “how does google search work” or “how to show up on Google” it’s surprising that it can be so hard to find the material that Google itself wrote about “how google search works” and “how to show up on Google”.

What to Do if Your Website Is not Showing up on Google Searches

Answer these five questions (from https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/34397?hl=en):

1. Do I serve high-quality content to users?

2. Have you completely filled out a profile on Google My Business?

3. Is my content fast and easy to access on all devices?

4. Is my website secure?

5.  Do I need additional help?

More information can be found on Google's web page for How to Get Your Website on Google

For more on SEO and my perspective, please read on.

More links to resources here for what Google says about how Google Search works  

Personally, I still love the video from Matt Cutts from like 2004 about How Google Search Works, but this is obviously more up to date. I will include the Matt Cutts video here as well.

What Google Says About How Google Search Works

• Here is a link to Google’s definitive mini-site about How Google Search Works :  https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/
• Here is an article published in 2018 officially acknowledging that speed is officially a factor in how a site is ranked:
  https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/07/search-ads-speed
  

What is Website Speed?

If your website is “mysupercoolwebsite.com” and I type “mysupercoolwebsite.com”, do I see your website immediately, or do have to look at a blank screen for a while before your website actually pops up.  If your website is fast, it pops up quickly.  If it’s slow, it doesn’t.  

There are lots of reasons that a website can be slow.  However, if your website is less than 10,000 pages and built on a modern website platform (e.g. HubSpot, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, etc. etc. etc.) you’re probably fine.  However, you should be careful that when you add pictures to your website you “optimize them for web”.  In other words, don’t have  pictures that are heavier than 250 KB.  

In this 2014 article Google officially acknowledged that SSL / HTTPS was a factor in showing up on Google:
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html

Videos About How Google Search Works:

Matt Cutts 2010 Video About What Happens When You do a Web Search:

More in Depth 2014 Video from Matt Cutts About How Search Works:

👇👇👇MY FAVORITE (only 5 minutes long) 👇👇👇

More Recent 2019 Video How Google Search Works in 5 Minutes (REALLY GREAT!) My new favorite:

If you want to get REAAALY deep into the weeds of how search works, check out Google’s Official Search Quality Guidelines Document you can download the most recently updated version here December 5, 2019, or click on this link to get it from Google directly: Warning, this document is super technical and long:

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf