Search Engines
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.
The Project: Page Rank Update
Note: If you are unaware of The Project topic, please read the previous parts The Project: pt1 , pt2, pt3I usually have a pretty good hunch of future PR updates, and it was accurate...
A Visit to GooglePlex Irvine
A big thanks to Zachary Applegate from Plumber Surplus for contributing this blog on the subject of his team's recent visit to Google's Irvine complex. Hopefully you'll enjoy it as much as I have: While our small team from PlumberSurplus.com was excited to be able to go to the Google open house in their new Irvine California office, we were u...
The Project: Generating AdSense Revenue From Low Traffic Site (pt3)
Note: If you are unaware of The Project topic, please read the previous parts: The project: In the beginning (pt1) The project: ... there was Silence. (pt2) Pretty often I hear people complaining about how hard it is to generate revenue from low tra...
Lord of Yahoo!'s Short Tail
Someone has Yahoo!'s number down cold. Ranking on page one for thousands of the most popular search phrases in existence, the site isn't even offering content of its own - instead, they're aggregating content from others and serving what is, in essence, duplicated content that's been scraped and re-packaged. Their business model? Serving ads... What are they ranking for? phot...
What I Learned from Yahoo!'s Analyst Day
Some terrific charts, stats and research came out of Yahoo!'s Analyst Day PDF file (too bad it's a PDF). I thought it would be worthwhile to explore some of the trends Yahoo! is pointing to out of self-interest and expand their definition for the whole of the web industry: ...Level Up Your SEO Skills With Our Free Training
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Top Ten Twisted Trends
I'm fairly sure this is exactly what the Google programming team had in mind when they created Trends - a list of geeky searches that produced humorous graphs. Here goes: #10 - Spending Christmas by YourselfFolks seem to be getting lonely around t...
The Yahoo! vs. AdSense Rumor
I keep getting bugs in my ear (or little birdies) dropping hints that Yahoo!'s organic search is predisposed against websites serving AdSense. That' s not to say that many sites serving the Google ads don't rank well at Yahoo!, but rather that Yahoo! has some negative associations with AdSense serving content and won't be as friendly as they should be. I've heard this rumor two way...
Dilbert on Google
Via an email from Joe Morin - Scott Adams takes a stab at the 'plex: ...
Reading Between the Lines on MC's Response to Sandbox Questions
I want to send out a big, electronic hug (and possibly another bottle of scotch) to Mike Grehan (wherever he might be this week). During his hour-long interview with Matt Cutts, Mike asked some of the very best questions I've heard/seen in the search industry field. Not only that, he got some real answers. From ...
Yahoo!'s Most Popular Search Term?
Why, it's the same as MSN's... "Google." But, Yahoo! is fighting back by placing a Yahoo! search box at the top of the SERPs on a Google search: I real...