How Does Google Scholar Work?

Google Scholar is a search engine for scholarly literature at major academic publishers & university presses that lets you find articles/citations on the topic of your choice.

It ranks documents based on the number of times an article has been viewed, printed, or downloaded within a set period of time (usually around 1 yr). Its aim is to rank documents the way researchers would: based on relevance & popularity.

Documents are added to its library when publishers submit them to the GS Metadata Program. From there, documents are indexed, ranked, & made available to searchers in search results.