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.
If there is only one trend in search marketing, it's that it's becoming more about people and relationships. It's not too much of a leap in logic to say that perhaps we should start thinking not just about the search engine algorithms, but the algorithms of the human brain.
One theory about 7-result SERPs
At SEOmoz, we compute and track correlations against Google search results with each Mozscape index release. Recently, we've noticed some interesting changes in the page level vs domain level link metrics and decided to investigate.
If you're like me and you have your finger on Google’s pulse on a daily basis, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Author Rank. However, I honestly don’t think it’s received its due attention and if you were AFK for a few days or don’t have the option to be “jacked into the feed”, you may have missed it entirely.
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People talk a lot about APIs in the SEO industry - the tools you can build with them, the competitive analysis data you can access, thereports you can automate. However, we tend not to discuss the wider picture, the thousands of APIs out there for other things, and most importantly the profound effect that APIs are going to have on the web, and thus the SEO industry, in the coming decade.
Even in 2012, Exact-Match Domains (EMDs) seem to carry a lot of influence, and people are eager to snap them up. I explore the data to see if this influence is really as strong as it once was (or as people believe it is).
After spending weeks analyzing our link profile, determining spam vs. quality links, and looking at on-page factors, I’ve decided to share how I am recovering from Google’s latest visit to the zoo. I'm giving you the no holds barred (yes, all the embarrassing stuff) that most likely contributed to the site’s penalty and what I have done to try and fix it. No major wins yet, but we are on our way to a better and cleaner site profile that we can be proud of.
Rumors are that Google SERPs have been more "crowded" (fewer domains) lately, and that some SERPs are showing less than 10 results. Thanks to the Mozcast data set, I've been able to show that both ideas are much more than rumor.
One thing SEOs have followed, gauged, studied, wondered and lost sleep over is what effects do Twitter trends have on SEO?
SEOmoz recently received an unnatural link warning in Google Webmaster Tools! GULP. Here's the story of what happened, what we did and why you may be seeing the same warning.
On the 6th of July I accidentally came across (what could be any time soon) Google's new tabular mega sitelinks. They became available to me purely by coincidence but the unique opportunity to see something which was unavailable to most searchers was more than welcome.
This might sound a little crazy, but the best SEO you can do right now is no SEO. Yes, follow the guidelines previously mentioned. I would consider this search engine compliance more than I would search engine optimization. But don't go around the Internet looking for any and every opportunity to do something that is going to increase your search engine rankings.
How social media and social search are making the web for humans.
On the morning of June 5th, just as the sun was coming up over the horizon, I saw something in the woods of Mountain View. I swear I wasn't drinking. Well, not much.