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.
Google Organic Click-Through Rates in 2014
We've all been there. Trying to improve our organic rankings so we can get more traffic from the search engines. And every time we do that, we are left with some big questions in our minds, like: How much traffic would I actually get if I rank on the first page? This post offers a new study of click-through rates of various positions on SERPs in an attempt to answer those questions.
The Myth of Google's 200 Ranking Factors
Nothing like the "The 200 Google Ranking Factors" actually exists. It is a myth, and those who claim to be able to offer a final list are its prophets. This post explains how the myth was born and the importance of knowing the stages of search engines' working process.
Searchmetrics Ranking Factors 2014: Why Quality Content Focuses on Topics, not Keywords
Searchmetrics recently launched their yearly Ranking Factors Study that bases numbers on rank correlation and averages of top 10 SEO rankings. The 2014 analysis shows that content on top-performing sites is much more holistic and less keyword-focused. In this post, Marcus Tober, founder and CTO of Searchmetrics, explains why you should focus on more than just keywords when it comes to technical aspects of your site, and how you can create relevant, comprehensive content for users.
We Removed a Major Website from Google Search, for Science!
What happens when you accidentally de-index your site from Google, on purpose? We decided to find out for ourselves by removing Followerwonk from search results. Here's what we learned.
What Happened after Google Pulled Author and Video Snippets: A Moz Case Study
In the past 2 months Google made big changes to its search results. Webmasters saw lost both authorship photos and video snippets. Here at Moz, we've closely monitored our traffic to our own URLs to measure the effect of these changes on our actual traffic. The results surprised us.Level Up Your SEO Skills With Our Free Training
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The Month Google Shook the SERPs
In the month between June 28th and July 28th, Google made four major changes: (1) dropping authorship photos, (2) doubling In-depth, (3) removing many video snippets, and (4) the "Pigeon" update.
Unraveling Panda Patterns
I'm going to be asking you to take over as Panda for a little while to see if you can identify the kinds of things that Google's Navneet Panda addressed when faced with what looked like an incomplete patent created to identify high quality sites.
Dear Google, Links from YouMoz Don't Violate Your Quality Guidelines
Recently, Moz contributor Scott Wyden, a photographer in New Jersey, received a warning in his Google Webmaster Tools about some links that violated Google's Quality Guidelines. One example was from outdoorsrank.com.
Google Announces the End of Author Photos in Search: What You Should Know
Many of us have been constantly advising webmasters to connect their content writers with Google authorship, and it came as a shock when John Mueller announced Google will soon drop authorship photos from regular search results. Let's examine what this means.
Your Google Algorithm Cheat Sheet: Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird
Google Panda, Penguin, and Hummingbird: Do you have questions about the Panda algorithm, the Penguin algorithm, or Hummingbird? This guide explains in lay terms what each of these Google algorithm changes is about and how to improve your site so that it looks better in the eyes of the big G.