Google has been providing more and more details lately about the “inner” workings of their products, and they continued this today with the release of an infographic to Mashable on just how Google Search works. Let’s check it out.

The infographic covers each step of the search, from what goes on behind the scenes to what a person sees output from their Google search. Always working even when you aren’t searching, “[Google] use[s] software robots, known as web crawlers or spiders, that ‘crawl’ through the World Wide Web, moving from link to link to find webpages and taking the data on them back to Google’s servers.”

The web is like a book with millions of pages, and our job is to index that book.

Once you begin your search, Google’s proprietary algorithm scours their data servers at or near the speed of light to find what you’re looking for. With “Google Instant,” users start seeing predictions of searches and possible results without hitting enter, saving you time and answering your questions faster.

The algorithm, which Google fine-tunes constantly with over 500 improvements per year, uses over 200 signals to decide the most relevant content and answers for your question.

Once the algorithm works its magic, your results and Instant Previews are displayed, in an average of 1/10th of a second! This is done even with 16% of all Google Searches done each day being completely new! Google also states that Search has answered 450 Billion, yes billion, new unique queries since 2003.

It’s nice to see that Google is continuing to highlight their products and letting users know more about the actions that go on behind the scenes to make their products work. We look forward to see which product they highlight next!