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.
And now, a brief rant about YouTube:Call me a purist, but when I do a search for something like "the killers mr. brightside music video," I don't want 29 of the 30 search results to be of some a-hole teenager lip-synching to the damn song. You may think your video is cool, Mr. A-Hole Teenager, but it's not. It doesn't have Eric Roberts in it. Only The Killers' music video doe...
Lots of bloggers are commenting about this thread at Digitalpoint on why Google's algo has never been leaked. My take on the algo - it would barely help if it was public knowledge. Yes, we'd all sit down and analyze all the cool things Google can detect about trust and gaming and spam and manipulation... and then? Then, w...
It’s roughly three months since I wrote about the project site (original post), and it’s time to take a peek how the site is doing. I admit that I’m still being extremely lazy/busy, and have done lots of t...
Google has been using "onebox" results for travel related searches since at least October of 2005. I'm forced to wonder if, during the entirety of that period, Google's been sending the default link to Expedia. For example: I searched for Seattle to New York and got:...
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Almost everyone in the industry who's had a chance to interact one on one with a Googler in the past 6 months has probably noticed that it "feels" different from the interactions of the past 3 years. Robert Scoble did a good job describing it with regard to his recent visit to the 'plex...
Although it's a bit hard to follow, Dr. Garcia (aka Orion), who operates the Miislita site and blog, has a great blog post on the Latest SEO Incoherences (a clever acronym pun on LSI). He ta...
Matt Cutts brought up an interesting point about the Google Terms of Service. Basically that scraping them is against their Terms of Service. Most websites these days have some type of TOS but I've never heard of one actually being enforced. I know that if you're being a good guy and a...
AOL search data - why am I posting this under Google? Because AOL uses Google for their search.I recently grabbed a copy of the AOL search data that was released earlier this month. The dataset is rather large - 450MB compressed - over 1.4GB uncompressed in MySQL.This...
Here's the last belated Matt Cutts video transcript. This one was posted on Matt's blog on August 8th (and there's a shout out to yours truly!). It exclusively has to do with the launch of Google Webmaster Central, which Rand covered in a ...
Hey everyone, Rebecca here. I'm back from San Jose (and San Diego for a brief R&R), and I have GREAT news. Apparently my toiling over transcribing Matt Cutts' videos has paid off big time, because he and I are totally BFF (best friends forever). Seriously, check this out: ...
Poor Vanessa Fox, working late on a Friday night. I felt so bad for her, I just had to post this timely review of Google's new Webmaster Central, which is replacing sitemaps (and including its old functionality). There's a lot of material to cover, so let's ...
A little bird passed me a rumor today that I can neither confirm or deny, but it's certainly worthy of discussion. The theory goes - when launching a new site, buying a significant quantity of AdWords/AdSense for the site is a good way to tell Google the site isn't spam and avoid long waits in the sandbox. Here's my take on this: There is some logic in the idea that a...
If this were America, surely security would haul off this man in a heartbeat. But it's not. This is Japan, land of the weird and wacky (I know, did I mention I lived there for 10 months?) and Japanese comedian Razor Ramon merely brushes them aside with a... thru...
Dear Mr. Cutts,I want to start off by saying thank you for taking time out of your undoubtedly busy life fielding SEO's most burning questions. That being said, I beg you to please stop answering questions via video. I've been chained to my desk for over a day now, and my skin has been rubbed raw from the cuff around my ankle (and from my unsuccessful attempts to gnaw off my own foot)....