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.
Back in August, we analyzed 10,000 SERPs and found that Google was rewriting 58% of the title tags we were able to track. In September, after some serious objections from the SEO community, Google made changes so that “title elements are now used around 87% of the time”. This immediately raises two questions. First, has the situation improved? Second, why the huge mismatch between our numbers? Let’s take a look.
Given how cryptic Google typically is about core updates, it can often seem like we’re at the mercy of the algorithm, with no legitimate measures of our own to employ. However, there are in fact ample tactics at our disposal to address, analyze, and affect the outcomes of core algorithm updates.
For local brands, reputation is everything. It’s an always-on sales force, quality control, and a business intelligence methodology when creatively managed, and it’s also a key component in how Google views entities. Today, we’ll take a swift trek through top takeaways from Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.
The promised page experience updates from Google that caused such a stir last year are far from being done, so Tom takes a look at where we are now and what happens next for the algorithm’s infamous Core Web Vitals.
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When there is a search query on Google, Google Ads runs a quick auction to determine which ads will show for that query, and what the ad positions should be. This ad auction is repeated every time an ad is eligible to appear for a search term, and is an integral part of the SERP landscape. To help understand it, Tanuja covers the what, how, and why behind the Google Ads auction.
Google's recent Top Stories redesign introduced a new 7-pack of news results, marking a big jump in SERP real estate. We dig into the MozCast 10,000-keyword daily tracking set to get you the full story.
SERPs are becoming more diverse and interactive, making any CTR study out there much less reliable, because no two sets of search results are ever the same. So, how much control do content creators have over how their work is represented in search? As it turns out, quite a bit!
Local SERP tracking has historically been seen as challenging for any business type, but today, we’ll take a look at the lay of the competitive landscape and offer some helpful solutions.
Keyword clustering is the SEO tactic to use if you want to seamlessly optimize your SEO content and streamline your workflow at the same time. The best part? It’s fairly simple, and SERPs give you all the information you need to make an informed decision on exactly how to do it.
Our STAT Product team has been hard at work implementing indented results in rank tracking and they are now available in SERP feature tracking. Here’s a quick walk-through of how to put indented results data to work.
Most websites, big or small, have lots of content that should be indexed — but isn’t. In this post, let’s address some of the most common issues, and how to mitigate them.
The rebrand of Google My Business to Google Business Profile included the news that nice dashboards will be the sole province of more fortunate, large enterprises. In response, please join me in sending three invitations to Google from the local business neighborhood, in hopes of an RSVP.
![Performance as a Ranking Factor: The State of the Web and Core Web Vitals [Part 3]](https://moz.rankious.com/_moz/images/blog/banners/MDES-1122_PMB_Blog_Announcement_Blog_1180x400.jpg?w=1180&h=400&auto=compress%2Cformat&fit=crop&dm=1618868967&s=9f3ac8335eb39d38a711efa35ac6b70a)
Are Core Web Vitals correlated with rankings? If so, is that any more true than it was before the Page Experience Update? In the third and final post of this series, we’ll see what the data tells us about the relationship between CWV metrics and organic ranking performance.
Recently, Google pushed a full roll-out of indented results. Why should you care, and what should you do about them?