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.
I'm sure we have all seen it, or have had it happen to us. You are doing a search on Google and you get a results page that says "Did you mean, ####" at the top of the page. I firmly believe that this is a helpful tool to many people who are either horrible spellers, or had a momentary "brain-fart"! But what do you do when this affects your own search engine traffic?...
So here's an interesting thought... You're Google. You have every page on everyone's site in the world (or near as makes no odds) indexed. What more can you do with that information?Well, how about providing a search function for that person's site. Looks like that's what the big G is thinking at the moment at any rate. Have a look at the following examples, and see w...
Tonight I'm in Portland for tomorrow's SEMpdx Searchfest conference, where I'll be giving a keynote address at 9am on The Algorithmic Evolution of Search Engines and the Impact on Search Marketing Campaigns. Like most keynotes, it's designed to be more of a broad overview, focusing on understanding the hows and whys of m...
If you search enough at Google, you're bound to end up with some strange results, but as search marketers, we're often able to take a closer look and understand why something is ranking or appearing where it is. However... even I was stumped, surprised or just tickled to see some of the results below: ...
Complete courses to master SEO basics
Learn Keyword Research like the pros
Win rankings and traffic from your competition
The vast majority of search marketers operating in the organic space at least lay claim to "following the latest algorithms" at the search engines, and in 90% of the client pitches I've ever heard (or made, for that matter), the subject comes up at least once. However, I think this is still a topic about which there's not a lot of true understanding and for those new to the field, it'...
Google has got lots and lots of uses, one of them is to define words, it can be done either by putting "what is keyword", only 1 definition would appear, or by putting "define: keyword". Google defines this function...
I had a fascinating breakfast discussion with Jonathan Hochman from Hochman Consultants on Friday about Google's market dominance and the potential roads that might eventually lead to their fall. Naturally, we looked for comparison companies to help inform our thinking. While firms like AT&T and Exxon met their demise from anti-trust laws, Google is l...
I have to confess from the outset that I'm new to this industry, my background being very much as an offline marketer, so apologies if anyone's come across this already!I was googling some fairly generic PPC terms - 'PPC Management'; 'PPC Agencies'; and so on. I then remembered that I needed to write a document for our sales team, and so I googled 'managi...
Like everyone else in the search industry, I have my $0.02 I'm just dying to give on the MS/Yahoo! deal. First off, I think we need to decide officially whether the new moniker will be Micrahoo! or Yahrosoft. Next, we should probably take a quick walk through the timeline of events so everyone's on the same page. Here's a quick look back: ...
One of the most interesting stories to catch my eyes in the last few months was this exposé from Chris Bennet at 97th Floor - Google, Your Honeymoon with Rip Off Report Has to Stop. Looking through Chris' detailed research into the practices of the website and perusing so...
SEOmoz's Q+A section has been a goldmine of eye-opening experiences for the entire staff, and never more so than when we see something so bizarre, so surprising, that it defies explanation. Tonight, we not only got to see one of these fascinating search riddles, we're actually able to share (a rare event as most domains with specific search problems ask to re...
I don't generally like to pick on Google, or anyone else in particular for that matter, but since the search giant is hitting on all cylinders, I think they can probably take a little nudge or two. I'm going to keep this short, sweet and to the point (and also very self-centric, because it's tough to effectively analyze everything that might have happened on someone else's site): ...
Many search marketers know about the ‘random surfer’ behind Google's PageRank (the real one, not the green bar also known as Google Toolbar PageRank). In Google’s own words, it’s described like this: PageRank can be thought of as a model of user behavior. We assume there is a "random ...
INTRO From Rand: Although my grandfather, Si Fishkin, has attended many industry events, provided coverage and helped with premium Q+A as well as some of our consulting work, this is his first post on the SEOmoz blog. Si was in town for the Thanksgiving holiday and generously contributed some time to the blog. Please welcome him!...