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.
Yesterday I read two blog posts, that's right, TWO in one day, and it got me thinking.The first I read was lovely Jane's post 'Google's Advice - Godsend Or Gimmick?' which sparked the usual Google is great/Google sucks debate. I then read a post on the Webmaster blog, '...
Here I am making my second post on here.After being burned by a hacker on adwords, having a limited knowledge of the Google Adwords program, but enough to push a business well, I was forced to look at some procedures of google such as the fraud reporting procedure.This also prompted me to decide to get adwords qualified.At first when i looked at it I thought, "couldnt ...
What's the deal with all this advice that Google employees like to give us, then? Of all the search engines (and of many companies of Google's size and scope), Google appears to be the most open with its distribution of information, its interactions with its users and its willingness to give us advice.
Its 3am and I feel the perfect time to post my first blog, and im wondering about how Google will start to understand video going forward. Universal search is already presenting results where it is relevant to your query, and slowly multiple videos are being displayed, does that mean that Google is understanding video better already or just really giving us what they already know we want....
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I've been meaning to do a "fun" post for awhile, but haven't had the time or gotten around to it. A reality shared by many, no doubt. With the recent launch of the Professional's Guide to Advanced Search...
On Monday Google announced that Google Suggest would be 'graduating' from Labs (after 4 years!) and within the week making its way to every Google user. At the moment it appears only in the search box on Google.com and not the search results page (or Google.co.uk yet), but if you've not seen ...
Sometimes you come across a set of search results that just don't make any sense. For most ordinary users, I suspect they probably just move on to the next query, but for those of us deeply embedded in the world of search and SEO, these noggin'-scratchers just keep on itchin'. I've collected these ten over the past couple months and figured I'd share them on the blog with the hopes of g...
Logging in to Webmaster Tools today I saw something new under the Tools section labeled "Enhance 404 Pages". Google is experimenting with a simple widget that you can use to add to your 404 pages to give users other options to explore your site. As the ...
I've been lucky enough to be traveling out of the country since late June (if you get the chance to go to Morocco -- DO IT!) and was pleasantly surprised to see that Google has added approximate search numbers to their Keyword Tool. However, I started to wonder just how close the approximate numbers were to the accurate numbers. So, I decided to look at the numbers from one ...
This guide came around as the result of a post I previously wrote for YOUmoz, which in itself came around as a result of a night of drinking and being sent an interesting Google SERP. That post focused on the URL parameters you can feed into Google to generate SERPs.This time however I’m looking at Google Maps....
What's up, YOUmoz! Ok, enough small talk. I'll get right to the point. I have a 2-page website that I created for the sole purpose of having something to link to from my SEOmoz profile page. My site doesn't really do anything or provide any useful information, but I use it to experiment on sometimes. Over the past 3 months, I've written several YOUmoz po...
I must have missed something. I always thought Google doesn't see links inside JavaScript code. As Rand writes in the Beginner's Guide, JavaScript passes no ranking or spidering value and pages behind JavaScript navigation may never be found by search engines if they are not reachable v...
Hi, and welcome to part III of the ongoing debate "why the h*ll do some SEOmoz profiles have PR and others don't". If you are unfamiliar with this question, you read about parts I and II.As an intro I would like to say that I was ver...
One of the challenges that small businesses have is being found in local search. I have a chart based on some studies that I share with prospective clients to show them the importance of optimizing their whole site - not just buy PPC with some keywords. When we optimize a business site, we like to look at all aspects and fine tune from messaging to sales conversions. We ask the customer to...