Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to today's lesson.

My name is Mrs. Jenkins.

I can't wait to learn with you today.

Welcome to today's lesson.

It is taken from the unit Introduction to Computer Systems. Today's lesson is called "How Search Results Are Ranked," and by the end of the lesson, you'll be able to explain how search results are ranked.

In today's lesson, we have two keywords.

These words will appear throughout the lesson, so it's really useful if we know what they mean before we get started.

The first word is rank, and rank is the order search results appear in based on how useful and relevant they are.

The second word is algorithm, a precise set of ordered steps which can be followed by a human or a computer to do a task.

So those two words are rank and algorithm.

Keep an eye out for them throughout the lesson.

In today's lesson, "How Search Results Are Ranked," we have two learning cycles.

The first is explain that search engines rank using rules.

The second is to use criteria to rank a webpage SEO.

We're going to begin with explain that search engines rank using rules.

These tables list the six biggest cities in the world.

How is this table ordered? What did you think? This is a second table.

How is this table ordered? What did you think? How did you get on? In table A, the cities are ordered alphabetically, so they begin with Cairo, going through to Tokyo in alphabetical order.

In table B, the cities are ranked by their population, so the list begins with Tokyo, going down to Sal Paolo.

So in table B, the cities are ranked by their population.

Which table is more useful and why? A table sorted by population is more helpful when doing tasks to do with population number.

Search engines can return millions of results for one search.

Without ranking, it would be hard to find useful pages.

Laura says, "How do search engines decide to order results?" Great question, Laura.

Search engines use an algorithm, which is a set of rules, to decide rankings.

It is not in random order.

True or false: there is no order to search engine results? Have a go.

How did you get on? I asked you true or false: there is no order to search engine results? It is false.

Search engines rank pages using an algorithm.

The results are often ranked by relevance.

If you searched for best football team, the results could be ranked by number of times football team appears or how popular the page is.

Sam asks, "Are web links on a page important?" Great question, Sam.

If lots of webpage link to a page, it appears more important to a search engine, which will improve its ranking.

Which of these is a reason a webpage might rank higher: A, it is brightly coloured; B, it matches the search term well; C, It is an old website? Have a go.

How did you get on? I asked you which of these is a reason a webpage might rank higher: A, it is brightly coloured; B, it matches the search term well; or C, it is an old website? The answer is B, it matches the search term well.

Great job, everyone.

What content can you find on websites? Websites can contain text, images, videos, games, and hyperlinks to other websites.

Aisha says, "I've seen websites with text and images," and Jacob says, "I watch videos on websites." Sam says, "I use websites to play games and find out information." This is your first task.

On paper, create a webpage about your school.

This is a design template for a webpage.

This is where you can plan out all the features of the webpage.

Create a webpage about your school.

So here's some examples of what you could put on your webpage: your webpage address; webpage heading; subheadings; paragraphs of information; pictures or diagrams; and links to other webpages.

Have a go.

Part two of our task is, if you are working with other people, they could suggest webpages to link to.

Maybe you could link to each other's web pages.

And question three, how do search engines rank their results? Have a go.

How did you get on? I asked you to create a webpage about your school and add paragraphs of information, webpage address, subheadings, webpage headings, pictures or diagrams, and links.

I also asked you how search engines rank their results.

Search engines use a set of rules, an algorithm, to rank their results.

Great job.

We're going to move on now to use criteria to rank a webpage SEO.

Sam's got a question for us.

She asks, "What is an algorithm?" An algorithm is a precise set of ordered steps, which can be followed by a human or computer to do a task.

Search engines follow an algorithm to decide the order of the results from a search term.

Sam continues to ask, "How does an algorithm decide ranking?" Web pages get a score based on different factors.

The higher the score, the higher the ranking.

What does search engines use to rank results: A, a random order; B, an algorithm, which is a set of rules; C, the order the pages were created; D, a person to decide the order? Have a go.

How did you get on? I asked you what do search engines use to rank results: A, a random order; B, an algorithm, which is a set of rules; C, the order the pages were created; or D, a person to decide the order? The answer is B, an algorithm, a set of rules.

Search engines use an algorithm to rank results.

Common factors that affect ranking are relevance.

Does the webpage match the search? Popularity, are other webpages linking to it? Up to date, is the content recent? And keywords, do they appear in the title and the content? Search engines keep their exact ranking rules secret.

Why do you think this is? The ranking rules are not made public to make sure websites are not cheating by adding the keywords multiple times.

Search engines keep their exact ranking rules secret.

What is wrong with this webpage? The creators have just repeated the search term as many times as possible.

Is the content useful content? Websites can improve their ranking by search engine optimization, SEO.

Websites use SEO to help search engines notice them and show them near the top of the results list.

Some ways this is done: using keywords that match what people are searching for; making their website easy to read and quick to load; adding high-quality information that is useful.

Sam asks, "Why does SEO matter?" Most people only look at the first few results when they are searching for something.

Website creators want their websites to be at the very top of the list.

True or false: a website with lots of links from other websites is likely to rank higher? Have a go.

How did you get on? I asked you true or false: a website with lots of links from other websites is likely to rank higher? The answer is true.

If a website has lots of links from other websites, it is likely to rank higher.

We're going to move onto our second task now.

You are going to look at the webpage you created and decide on five key words.

These should be words or phrases someone would search to find your webpage.

They should appear often in your webpage content.

Then, you are going to evaluate your webpage's SEO score.

Use this table to evaluate the score.

So you get one point each time a search term appears in the paragraph of text, five points each time a search term appears in the subheadings, 10 points if the search term appears in the heading, 20 points if the search term appears in the URL, and 50 points for each other webpage that has linked to your page.

Have a go.

Once you have done that, I want you to look and think, what changes to your website would you make to improve your SEO score even further? Have a go.

Okay, I would like you to compare your results with the other websites.

How does your score compare with everyone in your groups? Great job, everyone.

You've worked so hard today.

Let's summarise what we have learned.

Search engines can return millions of results for one search.

Without ranking, it would be hard to find useful pages.

Search engines follow an algorithm to decide the order of results from a search term.

The results are often ranked by relevance.

Websites can improve their ranking by using search engine optimization, SEO.

Websites use SEO to help search engines notice them and show them near the top of the list.

Great job, everyone.

You have worked so hard today.

I hope to learn with you again soon.