The Incredible Shrinking SERP - 2015 Edition
First, there were 10 results, then sometimes 7, and now as few as 4. In the past year, Google has changed the page-1 landscape entirely, and we barely noticed.
Search Engines
Understanding how search engines work, Google in particular, is important when working in SEO. The basics of crawling and indexing are amazingly useful to understand if you want to rank your own content.
Additionally, Google updates its algorithm several times a year. Understanding the more significant updates, and how they work, can help you to craft content and SEO strategies that are up-to-date.
We've written extensively about how search engines work, and included some of the top resources here. You can also browse the latest posts on search engines from the Moz blog below.
How Search Engines Work : New to SEO? Start with the basics of how search engines operate with our free beginner's guide.
Search Engine Ranking and Visibility : Learn the fundamentals of how search engines rank content on search engine result pages.
Google Algorithm Update History : A complete history of Google algorithm updates since 2000. This includes important links and references for understanding how Google works.
How Search Engines Value Links : Search engines work off a number of signals, but two of the most important are content and links. In this video, Rand Fishkin explains the basics of link evaluation.
MozCast : Is Google updating it's algorithm as we speak? MozCast is the Google algorithm weather report, so you can see how much Google results are changing each day.
Most Recent Articles on Search Engines
9 Things You Need to Know About Google's Mobile-Friendly Update
My colleague Emily Grossman and I wanted to cut through the noise and bring online marketers a clearer picture of what's in store later this month. In this post, you'll find our answers to nine key questions about the update.
Music SEO - 7 Lessons in Brand Optimization for 2015
For B2B or ecommerce, people often discover your brand with commercial queries like "dining room lamps" or an informational search like "how to fix a dishwasher". Then they look around your site, your social profiles, get retargeted—before ever making a purchase—but in many cases that journey started with an non-branded organic search.
How Google Pulls Structured Snippets from Websites' Tables
There are many pages on the Web that are filled with data in the form of tables, and Google is including some of that tablular data in search results in places that may surprise you. Here's how it works, and how you can take advantage.
Level Up Your SEO Skills With Our Free Training
Moz Academy Training
Complete courses to master SEO basics
Keyword Research Master Guide
Learn Keyword Research like the pros
Guide to SEO Competitor Analysis
Win rankings and traffic from your competition
7 Ways to Get Traffic and Leads When Google Won't Send Them
Often, the best methods to secure traffic and links are right under your nose, requiring little more than ingenuity and some legwork.
The Importance of Strategic Focus in an Evolving Algorithmic Environment
Looking to navigate the murky waters of algorithmic updates to better your business? You'll need plenty of data and a solid strategic mindset. What you uncover will likely be as surprising as it is useful.
The Danger of Crossing Algorithms: Uncovering The Cloaked Panda Update During Penguin 3.0
Think you just got hit by Penguin 3.0 but the data don't quite make sense? You might be looking at a Penguin-Panda-Pirate combo. Glenn Gabe explains
Google's Physical Web and its Impact on Search
Google's Physical Web project is a new initiative to establish a standard for making 'smart' objects which people can interact with via their smart phones or similar devices. This post introduces the Physical Web concept, how it works, and will make a couple of first predictions about how this might affect SEO in the future, including how interactions will be ranked.
How Big Was Penguin 3.0?
Google has confirmed that Penguin 3.0 has/is rolled/rolling out, so why didn't MozCast detect anything? We dive deep into the data to find out if Penguin 3.0 just wasn't very big after all.
Eye Tracking in 2014: How Users View & Interact with Google SERPs
With Google's SERPs always testing new features, the team at Mediative decided it was time to figure out how the "Golden Triangle" has changed. Check out how users are looking at and interacting with today's SERPs in the results of their study.
The Future of Link Building
What does the future for link builders hold? The answer is that it's not just about links anymore. They will always be important but there is much more to the future and link builders need to think a lot bigger in order to be a part of it.
Panda 4.1: The Devil Is in the Aggregate
With Panda, the devil isn't in the details, it's in the aggregate. Panda is a completely curable disease if we stop missing the forest for the trees.
More Google Answer Boxes, with Bonus Experiment!
Around September 25th, there was a significant jump in Google answer boxes, most or all of them coming from the new style answers. I dig into the data, examples, and an experiment with the Knowledge Vault.
Google Organic Click-Through Rates in 2014
We've all been there. Trying to improve our organic rankings so we can get more traffic from the search engines. And every time we do that, we are left with some big questions in our minds, like: How much traffic would I actually get if I rank on the first page? This post offers a new study of click-through rates of various positions on SERPs in an attempt to answer those questions.