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 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: ...
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 is now beginning to appreciate the unique challenges that come with size, scale and sprawling strategies.Like Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker — with great power comes great responsibility. And as Peter's alter-ego Spider-Man knows only too well, with great power comes a vast array of threats and enemies, too.Google aren't super heroes. They're a bunch of cl...
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...
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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...
Spotted in my native England at the Barbican Fish Bar on Southside Street, Plymouth, Devon UK Do we get this in the US?? I'd love to be able to get 1000s of these out in my metro! Best David S...
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: ...
When I first heard about Google’s proposed ...
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...
During the week – I was going over various sphinns, when I came across Goats Apples and Link building – I like inventive headlines, so I went ahead to read the story – and came across this SEOmoz comment referenced in the post:“I knew the reciprocal linking we were doing was over kill and done only to improve ...
What do Dan Thies, Aaron Wall, Dave Naylor, Dave Davis and select others (*cough Hamlet Batista*) have in common? They think like search engineers.Dan Thies wrote an excellent piece at SEO Fast Start on the suppleme...
In analysing keywords for our client who runs a local agency (what is reclamebureau in dutch), we discovered something nice at first. According to the search-engine keyword request database we noticed that reclamebureau was asked 95 times a day and have 440.000 competitors. Because of the fact in the Netherlands we have for some words two different ways of spelling (old and mod...
Some of you may have read one of my first YOUmoz posts about Bounce Rates. Although others have discussed and blogged about user statistics, I think it's important to revisit the issue. Google's search results have been dancing for awhile lately, largely in part to the axe coming down on pai...