Hello Elizabeth -
Not a dumb question at all!
Google constantly crawls the web looking for new pages to include in
its index. No one pays Google to be included nor promoted in
position/rank within search results (that appear on the left side).
The crawling and inclusion process is completely automatic. Google's
proprietary "PageRank" technology is how each site is electronically
evaluated for relevance in a search:
PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using
its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value.
In essence, Google interprets each link made to a site as a "vote" for
it. Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a
page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes
cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and
help to make other pages "important." Important, high-quality sites
receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it
conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if
they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with
sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both
important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the
number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of
the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to
determine if it's a good match for your query."(1)
Should your site not be seen by Google in a few weeks of it being
online, you can manually alert Google to its existence by submitting
the URL at this link:
For Site Owners: Submit your site
://www.google.com/addurl.html
(Note: Google does not add all submitted URLs to its index, and cannot
make any predictions or guarantees about when or if they will appear.)
Having sites with good PageRanks link to your site is the best way to
achieve better placement in search results. There are companies
called "Search Engine Optimizers (SEO's)" who can help with this
process (but beware of unethical tactics some may employ). This
search term yields all sorts of companies:
://www.google.com/search?q=search+engine+placement&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Here's admonishment from Google on the topic:
Search Engine Optimizers
://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
If you have any questions, feel free to ask before rating this answer. Thanks!
jbf777
(1) Google Technology
://www.google.com/technology/ |
