Search engines such as Google and Yahoo! may update their algorithm dozens of times per month. When you see rapid changes in your rankings, it is usually due to an algorithmic shift, a search index update, or something else outside of your control. SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, and some of the effects [...]

Some search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, have toolbars and systems like Google Search History and My Yahoo!, which collect information about a user. Search engines can also look at recent searches, or what the search process was for similar users, to help determine what concepts a searcher is looking for and what documents [...]

The search algorithm and search interface are used to find the most relevant document in the index based on the search query. First the search engine tries to determine user intent by looking at the words the searcher typed in. These terms can be stripped down to their root level (e.g., dropping ing and other [...]

Proximity By storing where the terms occur, search engines can understand how close one term is to another. Generally, the closer the terms are together, the more likely the page with matching terms will satisfy your query. If you only use an important group of words on the page once, try to make sure they [...]