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.
Just a little under two weeks ago, we received numerous reports that a very large number of sites had experienced a sudden drop in Page Rank. Many immediately began claiming that Google had rolled out an update for its rank formula to penalize for paid links. Others played down these reports offering that their own sites had experienced no change at all. How do...
Recently, I made the difficult decision to change the domain name of my blog and consulting website. It had to be done; the old name just didn't make sense anymore, no one could spell it, and it was terrible for SEO. Of course, I knew all of the rules of successful 301 redirection, in theory, but when it came to putting theory into practice, I found myself dreading pulling the switch....
If you've been on the Yahoo! home page in the last few days, you've seen this phenomenon: The red box around the Indiana Jones 4 link should, by all rights, take the user to a Yahoo! Movies page about the upcoming film - after all, Yahoo! has had links like these for ye...
The other night I was watching Knocked Up, and in the movie there are a few references to "Googling" something. For example, in one scene the older daughter is riding in a car and casually says "I Googled murder," while in another scene Leslie Mann's character asks Paul Rudd to "Google" their daughter's symptoms to determine whether she has the chicken pox or a rash. I also recently saw The Bourne Ultimatum, and in one scene Jason Bourne uses Google to search for an agent's name, and later on there is a car chase where the guys in one car are using Google Maps o...
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I think that sometimes we in the field of search marketing try to make the practice more difficult than it really is. True - there are hundreds of ways to build a link, an infinite number of keywords, thousands of unique sources to drive traffic along with analytics, design, usability, code structure, conversion testing, etc. However, when it comes to the very specific question of how to rank w...
I admit it - I struggle to understand patent applications (one of the big reasons that Si is part of our staff). However, Bill Slawski doesn't and it's made our collective lives in the SEO world (and the mozplex) considerably easier. Take, for example his two incredibly fascinating posts collecting patent applications and speculating on how the engines m...
Matt Cutts and I have a beautiful relationship - I bother him enough and he gives me answers to questions that are bothering webmasters. It's a cross between symbiotic and vampirical (vampiristic?). Thankfully, Matt has once again let me suck away some of his precious time to address some big issues. After this, I think I'll let him have a rest and probably go after poor Tim. I've poste...
Mystery Guest and I were running some queries on Yahoo! earlier this afternoon, when we received my personal favorite search results UI test pages, the beloved Purple Yahoo! Purple Yahoo! is a rare beast, from what I've seen. This is only the second time I can remember being served the results, though I know others have seen it before ...
While search engine representatives and light hatters (the whitest of the white hatters) say that having great, link-worthy content and links is enough to get high rankings, there are many sites with these traits that do not get listed for the words that matter (the ones that send serious traffic). If it were so easy and every page that deserved a high ranking had it, there would be n...
Image replacement can be a contentious issue when it comes to optimizing your websites for a search engine, but is widely supported by leading-edge web standards developers attempting to create more visually appealing websites for their users whilst still retaining semantic, accessible code.
The SEMNE organization landed an incredible opportunity last week with a guest lecture from Dan Crow. I've seen Dan speak once before several years ago and was shocked by his overly secretive conduct. Thankfully, Google, and apparently, Dan, have changed a lot since then. He had some remarkable...
I'm more than a little skeptical of mainstream media articles about the search engines. With so many terrible experiences - inaccuracy, bias, shallow information, agenda-based reporting - it's easy to see why. However, today I'm thrilled to see an article from Saul Hansel in the NY Times that's not only impeccably well-written, but informative to even those of in most deeply inside the search i...
Two days ago Agerhart.com posted their discovery that Yahoo! was cloaking their Autos page. As one of our resident programmers, Jeff, put it, Yahoo! was practicing in standard, run of the mill cloaking, where they look at the IP/user-agent and serve a different p...
Mystery Guest and I cruised to Yahoo! this evening and were both suddenly taken aback by what we saw: _ _ Here's a...