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.
More Papers Written by Googlers
Google has a new, expanded list of papers and projects written by their workers online. The repository is growing quite large and for obvious reasons, Google isn't showing nearly all of them. Their ability to continue to recrui...
Understanding Stemming
Xan Porter has an excellent blog entry on the subject of stemming in search engine indices. The article points to a terrific trove of resources on stemming, how it is performed a...
Google Maps - Now with Satellite Images
Google's Maps - a very functional, often inaccurate mapping program is now using the satellite images from Keyhole, acquired last year by Google, to supplement their offerings. To the right, I've added a map of the Lake Uni...
CIIR at U Mass. - Amherst
The University of Massachusetts, Amherst houses a project called the Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval. The project is focused on solving many of the IR problems in web search and document collection search. Some of the more fascina...
Temporal Links
A new thread at SEW explores the concept and value of a link over time. Does a long-standing link constitute trust or laziness? Are many new links to a site a sign of its current popularit...Level Up Your SEO Skills With Our Free Training
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Modern Information Retrieval by Baeza-Yates
Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto's Modern Information Retrieval is considered the standard for Information Retrieval courses at Universites like Berkley, U Mass & Stanford. The book is surprisingly easy to read, even if some sections ...
Jeff Dean of Google Speaks to UW
On October 21, 2004, Jeff Dean of Google gave a taped speech to the University of Washington's Computer Science department. Lucky for us, the UW put this ~55 minute speech on some of the more technical aspe...
Deep Insight into the Corporate Culture & Business Strategy of Google
John Heilemann, who has been writing about companies in Silicon Valley for the last ten years, has one of the most comprehensive, critical & engaging pieces on the corporat...
Approaching the End of the PageRank Era
Even a great technological innovation like PageRank will eventually be supplanted. For a web information retreival model, PR has already had a remarkable long life, yet its downfall has been predicted across the web by some of the very best in the industry. Here'...
A Glossary of Information Retrieval Terminology
Many times when reading through complex threads, research papers or even blogs by some of the more advanced SEOs in the industry, I get lost in the meaning of terms and an entire paragraph or document can be lost to my ignorance. Luckily, great resources like the...