SEO Wiki

Search engine optimization

From the SEO Wiki, published by Magnetize ME

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of improving a website so that search engines can understand its content and people can find it in unpaid, or organic, search results. Google describes it as helping search engines understand your content and helping users find your site and decide whether to visit.[1] Organic results are distinct from paid search ads, which are labeled "Sponsored" or "Ad"; Google says it does not accept payment to rank sites higher or crawl them more often.[2][3]

Google is by far the most-used search engine, with about 90% of worldwide search engine use as of September 2026,[4] so most SEO practice follows Google's published guidance.[1]

How search engines work

Google describes search as working in three stages.[3] In crawling, its crawler, Googlebot, discovers URLs through links, sitemaps and previous visits, then fetches and renders pages, including JavaScript, using a recent version of Chrome. In indexing, Google analyzes a page's text, key tags, images and video, groups near-duplicate pages and chooses a canonical, or most representative, version; not every crawled page is indexed. In serving, Google returns the indexed pages it judges most relevant and useful for a query, taking into account factors such as the searcher's location, language and device.[3] Google groups its ranking considerations as the meaning of the query and the relevance, quality and usability of pages, together with the searcher's context.[2]

Links and PageRank

Modern web search grew out of link analysis. In a 1998 paper, Stanford computer scientists Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page described a prototype search engine that used PageRank, a measure of a page's importance calculated from the web's link graph by modeling a "random surfer" following links, and that treated the anchor text of links as a description of the pages they point to.[5][6] Google says PageRank has been one of its core ranking systems since its launch, though how it works has changed substantially, and that it is only one of many signals.[7][1]

Main article: Link building

Ranking systems and updates

Google ranks results with automated ranking systems that weigh many factors and signals across hundreds of billions of pages; systems it has named include BERT, RankBrain, neural matching, passage ranking, PageRank, SpamBrain and its reviews system.[7] Several times a year it releases core updates, broad changes to its systems that do not target particular sites. Google says a drop after a core update does not necessarily mean a site is bad, only that other pages now merit a place, and advises site owners to review their content against its guidance on helpful, people-first content.[8]

Practices

SEO is commonly divided into work on page content, technical work that helps search engines crawl and index a site, structured data, local search for businesses serving nearby customers, and earning links from other sites. Google's Starter Guide says compelling, useful content is likely to influence a site's search presence more than any other recommendation it makes.[1]

Spam policies

Google's spam policies prohibit practices intended to manipulate rankings, including cloaking (showing search engines different content than users see), doorway pages, expired domain abuse, hidden text and links, keyword stuffing, link spam, scaled content abuse (producing many low-value pages to manipulate rankings, however they are made), scraping, sneaky redirects and user-generated spam.[9] Google detects violations with automated systems and, as needed, human review, and violating pages may rank lower or not appear at all.[9] When a human reviewer finds a violation, Google applies a manual action, which site owners see in Search Console and can ask to have reviewed after fixing the affected pages.[10]

History

The "Florida" update of November 2003, which Google never publicly explained, caused many sites to lose rankings; the trade publication Search Engine Journal calls it Google's first major algorithm update.[11] Google announced its Panda system to reward high-quality, original content in 2011 and Penguin to combat link spam in 2012; both were later folded into its core ranking systems, in 2015 and 2016 respectively.[7] The April 2012 change that became known as Penguin affected about 3.1% of English queries.[12]

Google began rewarding mobile-friendly pages in mobile results in April 2015,[13] launched its helpful content system in August 2022 to demote content made mainly for search engines,[14] and made that system part of its core ranking in March 2024.[7] In May 2024 Google began showing AI-generated summaries, called AI Overviews, to all U.S. users.[15]

Market

As of September 2026, StatCounter estimated Google's worldwide share of search engine use at 89.94%, followed by Bing (5.29%), Yahoo! (1.36%), Yandex (1.3%), DuckDuckGo (0.74%) and Baidu (0.44%).[4] On August 5, 2024, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly in general search, finding that it held 89.2% of that market and 94.9% on mobile devices.[16]

SEO agencies

Businesses often hire agencies to handle SEO. Agencies in the regions this wiki covers include:

Magnetize ME is the publisher of this wiki.

References

  1. ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ "Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Starter Guide". Google Search Central, updated December 10, 2025. developers.google.com
  2. ^ ^ "How Does Google Determine Ranking Results". Google Search. google.com
  3. ^ ^ ^ ^ "In-depth guide to how Google Search works". Google Search Central, updated December 18, 2025. developers.google.com
  4. ^ ^ ^ "Search Engine Market Share Worldwide". StatCounter Global Stats, September 2026. gs.statcounter.com
  5. ^ ^ Brin, Sergey; Page, Lawrence (1998). "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine". Computer Networks 30: 107–117 (via Google Research). research.google
  6. ^ Brin, Sergey; Page, Lawrence (1998). "The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine (full text)". Stanford University (mirror, University of Ioannina). cs.uoi.gr
  7. ^ ^ ^ ^ "A guide to Google Search ranking systems". Google Search Central, updated December 10, 2025. developers.google.com
  8. ^ "Google Search's core updates and your website". Google Search Central, updated December 10, 2025. developers.google.com
  9. ^ ^ "Spam Policies for Google Web Search". Google Search Central, updated August 28, 2026. developers.google.com
  10. ^ "Manual actions report". Search Console Help. support.google.com
  11. ^ "Google Florida: The First Major Algorithm Update". Search Engine Journal, May 11, 2020. searchenginejournal.com
  12. ^ Cutts, Matt (April 24, 2012). "Another step to reward high-quality sites". Google Search Central Blog. developers.google.com
  13. ^ "Rolling out the mobile-friendly update". Google Search Central Blog, April 21, 2015. developers.google.com
  14. ^ "What creators should know about Google's August 2022 helpful content update". Google Search Central Blog, August 18, 2022. developers.google.com
  15. ^ "Generative AI in Search: Let Google do the searching for you". Google, May 14, 2024. blog.google
  16. ^ Barakat, Matthew; Liedtke, Michael (August 5, 2024). "Judge rules Google has illegal monopoly over internet search". Associated Press (via FOX 13 Seattle). fox13seattle.com
  17. ^ "Magnetize ME Introduces AI Optimization Services in Response to Changing Search Behavior". Star Tribune, August 10, 2026. financialcontent.com
  18. ^ "Magnetize ME Relocates to Adair Park Development, Expanding SEO Services in Woodstock". Star Tribune, August 18, 2026. financialcontent.com
Categories: Search engine optimization · Web search engines · Digital marketing