Hello. I hope you're ready to get technical because in this lesson, we're going to define what we mean by an algorithm as it relates to SEO. Get familiar with the tools and technology used by SEOs to monitor the release and impact of these algorithm updates. There are so many of these updates happening all the time that we'll be focusing on only the major updates from the top market share search engine. Even then, algorithms and their evolution make up a great deal of SEO. We'll spend several lessons on this topic. Regardless of whether you're using Google, Bing, or another search engine, all search engines have the same goal to provide relevant information for a user's search query. If search engines cannot provide the results you're looking for within a timely manner, users will go elsewhere for future searches. Remember that while we can use search engines for free, search engines are in the business of making money. Each time a search is performed, a list of organic results, as well as paid results are displayed. The more searches that are performed on a search engine, the more people will be drawn to that search engine to purchase ad space. This means that if Google, for example, only showed ads instead of organic results, users would soon get tired of the results provided and go elsewhere. To keep users returning, they have to have a good mix of organic results and advertisements to attract users and keep them coming back. One way a search engine can ensure it is providing useful, relevant results for a particular query is through algorithms. Search engines use algorithms to determine the quality of a website, the theme of a website, and what types of queries the website should show up for in search results. Algorithms are also used to determine where in organic search results a particular website should be displayed for a specific query. There are many different algorithms and they'd look at hundreds of factors surrounding your website. As SEOs, our job is to determine which algorithms are focusing on what factors. We can optimize a website to meet that criteria. Through years of studying search engines and performing tests, the SEO community has agreed on many different factors that affect your website and how it ranks. Some of these factors are still subject to debate and speculation. Each year, Moz, a well-known SEO tool and community for SEOs, provides a list of what they view to be that year's top ranking factors. This is always an interesting read and can give a lot of insight into what is changing within SEO and the best areas to focus on. While you may not understand the different factors yet, I suggest you check out the page provided in your study material and keep that bookmarked. It will prove useful in your SEO career and you'll refer to it many times over. The main algorithms we focus on, are algorithms created and maintained by Google. This is because Google has the highest market share. We know that there are over 200 different ranking factors or signals used by Google to understand and rank a website. In addition to that, there are algorithm updates every single day. These updates may not always be huge or impact your website directly, but it's important to know that Google's algorithms are constantly shifting in order to provide users with the best results. In a single year, over 500 updates will have been made to the algorithms. Because there are so many updates, we have to rely on ourselves to notice these changes and how they impact search results. Google will only announce a small percentage of the updates they make. In general, they're very vague about what exactly is being updated and when. It is very important to remain vigilant of changes to search engine results, so you can get an idea of when an update has occurred, what the change might have been, and whether or not you need to make changes to your website. One way to remain vigilant of potential shifts in the algorithm is through a tool Moz has created. This tool is called MozCast and it provides a report showing turbulence in the algorithm over a period of time. Turbulence is measured by studying ranking fluctuations. Days which are higher in temperature have a higher percentage of ranking fluctuations, meaning that more people have experienced significant changes. This may hint that an algorithm update has been pushed out. Whenever you notice big changes in your rankings or traffic, it's a good idea to check out the MozCast to get a good idea of whether or not webmasters may be experiencing similar issues. In this example, you can see that the day I checked is very temperate and there's likely nothing going on. But there are some days here which are much higher temperatures than the average. This could indicate a small update was made. Take a moment to go to mozcast.com and take a look at what the current weather is for the date you're watching this video. I recommend reading through MozCast to learn more about the sample data they choose and what metrics they use to develop this report. Because algorithms are constantly evolving, it's very important you develop a proactive approach to your SEO efforts. Otherwise, you will constantly be chasing algorithms and then updating your site based on what has changed. The best approach is to look at what types of updates have occurred in the past and consider what Google's end goal is. You can then optimize your website in a manner that will stand the test of time. This means following many of the best practices we will lay out during this course. As well as optimizing your website with the user in mind rather than search engines. Following Google's best practices goes a long way toward ensuring your website will not get penalized or banned from an algorithm update. I have provided a link to a video by Google titled how Google makes improvements to its search engine algorithm. Please take a moment to watch the video before moving on.
