For an understanding of what and how important (Natural) Links are, we have to look at the nature of the internet.
The internet as a place, only exists in our fantasy. We as humans like to see things as solid and so real we could reach out and grab them.
The only thing we probably could grab is some cable and a
server hooked on the other end. We will never be in a place where everything will happen and all the information the net provides is concentrated.
The internet as such, just exists by providing information. Information stored on millions of severs all over the world that are connected to each other.
By following links to those pieces of information we are able to hop from one place to another. Each link is just an address that tells the computer to which server and page we want to be connected when klicked upon. The server then delivers the requested information and we are able to view it.
That, roughly said is the base of the internet.
On this base, the following of links, search engines are build. They simply automated the request for the information that can be reached by following links. This programm is called a
bot.
Google and other search engines like Yahoo and Bing, have many of these bots that do nothing more than request and gather the information that then is deliverd to a datacenter where it is procesed and stored.
So if information is only available by links, one doesn't have to be a scientist to see that these are very important. Google has build its PageRank system, part of its procedure to measure the importance of a single page, on those links. It basically just counts the number of links that point to a specific page. The more links the more important that page has to be. Each link can be seen as a vote.
So now we know the basics and a bit more.
In part 2 we will describe this voting system of Google a bit more.
