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.
From “basic” keyword recognition to natural language processing, search engines have made huge leaps in their ability to understand both online content and what users want and look for. I believe that understanding where search is going is fundamental if you are going to stay ahead of it.
Before the holidays, we spotted a significant drop-off (roughly 15%) in searches display authorship. I take a deep dive into that data, including 30- and 60-day views, an analysis of authorship counts, and queries that lost out.
It's time, once again, to continue my annual tradition of analyzing my predictions from 2013, and if I score high enough, predicting what will happen in 2014. I use this process because it keeps me honest, and keeps you informed as to my relative levels of accuracy (or failure)....
All of the articles on Moz's blog are usually serious and always highly informative for our community, but for the holiday season, I was inspired by the site's Google Algorithm Change History to contribute something a little more lighthearted as a year-end summary. So, here is The Twelve Days of Google Christmas, which reviews all of the "gifts" that Google has given we marketers and webmasters in the past year (or so) as far as the important changes to the search engine's algorithm.
Complete courses to master SEO basics
Learn Keyword Research like the pros
Win rankings and traffic from your competition
How will Google evolve after the acquisition of Wavii, Behav.io, PostRank, Grapple, and machine learning and neural computing technologies? Gianluca Fiorelli paints a picture of Google in 2014, based on entity search, semantic, and über-personalization, covering how Google's recent acquisitions will interact with one another in order to shape our search experience.
I wanted to take a big step back and analyse the cumulative effects of Google's updates. To do that, I asked four questions and analysed a year of MozCast data to find the answers.
I'm pleased to announce the MozCast Feature Graph, a three-in-one tool tracking changes to Google's SERP features. The Feature Graph tracks the presence of features, 30-day histories, and lets you find SERPs with any combination of those features.
MozCast measured a substantial one-day temperature spike on November 14th. This spike coincided with large-scale DNS errors, but the cause of the changes is unclear. Webmaster...
Sometimes, Google seems to be changing so quickly that it's easy to rush to conspiracies. This post is an attempt to make six data-driven predictions about how Google might change in 2014, including two conceptual screenshots.
As SEOs, we spend too much time living in fear of Google. Like any company, Google has weaknesses, and it's important for us to have perspective about their future (and how it impacts our own future). Here are six things that I think Google fears.
Late one night at Distilled's London offices, I stumbled upon a dark and astonishing secret. What followed allowed me to glimpse the future of our industry, and at the risk of being transformed into a toad, I now share with you my revelations from that evening.
There are many misconceptions about Google's Hummingbird update. What exactly did the update do, and how is it different from Penguin and Panda? How is it related to the move toward 100% (not provided)? This post consolidates the information we have available to answer all of these questions and more.
![A [Poorly] Illustrated Guide to Google's Algorithm](https://moz.rankious.com/_moz/images/blog/banners/search-engines-5511dd3_2021-03-31-024208.png?w=1180&h=400&auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=crop&dm=1617158528&s=91a8aff625575bbc46448e34adc0b740)
My ill-advised attempt to illustrate the Google algorithm and all its major parts. Inspired by a bad joke on Twitter that led to some very useful discussions.
Have you ever wondered what a Google result would look like if they put all of the SERP features on one page? Wonder no more. I present to you Mega-SERP, sponsored by my obsession with tacos.