How search works: from discovery to the SERP

Most SEO problems get simpler once you know at which stage a page stops. Below is the model I use in every SEO audit.

1. Discovery#

The crawler learns about the URL from internal and external links, from the sitemap.xml or from direct submission.

2. Crawling#

The crawler requests the page from the server. robots.txt, status codes and crawl budget matter here.

3. Rendering#

For JavaScript-dependent pages, the final content appears only after scripts run. Main content should already be in the initial HTML.

4. Indexing#

The engine analyses the page, selects the canonical URL and decides whether to keep it in the index.

5. Understanding#

Entities, topics, relationships and the intent the page satisfies.

6. Ranking#

Hundreds of signals: relevance, quality, authority, user experience.

7. SERP#

The final output: snippet, rich results, AI features.