When Google released “How Search Works,” the world of SEO was able to peek into the all-important system that operates Google search. The infographic places particular emphasis on removing spam in order to promote content-rich sites.

1. “How Search Works”
Reveals the Inner
Workings of

2. “How Search Works”
Reveals the Inner
Workings of Google
The recent release of Google’s newest infographic
triggered endless speculation among the SEO
community in the last couple weeks. Although much of
the information is aimed towards SEO newbies,
seasoned SEOs found that many elements of the
infographic gave them greater insight into certain
Google practices.

3. Google’s “How Search
Works” page is
exciting, and it’s a lot
of fun. The information
is concise and to the
point, so you don’t
have to wade through
lots of technical
details. The three
main categories that
the page examines are:
1. Crawling and Indexing
2. Algorithms
3. Fighting Spam

4. Entertaining Elements Include:
• Quirky illustrations.
• Real life examples of pages that have been recently
removed because of spam.
• A ticker at the bottom that tells you how many
Google searches have been performed since you
loaded the page. In the time it took create this
slideshare, people made over 132 million searches!

5. Why It Matters To You
If you’re new to SEO, “How Search
Works” is a great way to kick-start
your understanding of the basics. But
veteran SEOs are also buzzing about
the new glimpse into Google’s inner
workings.
The charts featured in
the infographic are
especially useful for
deepening your SEO
skills.

6. 3 charts included with “How Search Works”:
• The number of spam
notifications sent
through Webmaster
Tools since 2010
• The rate of
reconsideration request
received since 2006
• The amount of
different types of
spam removed by
manual action.

7. 3 charts included with “How Search Works”:
All three of these charts
reveal growth, pointing
to the fact that Google
is becoming more and
more effective at
preventing spam.
Anyone practicing
black hat SEO had
better watch out!

8. Preventing spam appears to be the most important
item on Google’s agenda. Although this infographic is
not going to tell you how to produce a website that
will immediately succeed in the rankings, Danny
Goodwin suggests that “How Search Works” is
effective in demonstrating what you shouldn’t do.

9. The Google Quality Rater Guidelines
“How Search Works” presents the
first official copy of the Google
Quality Rater Guidelines. As Barry
Schwartz points out, this
document has been leaked before
so it isn’t exactly new SEO
information.
The material covered in this
document explains some of the
basics that Google raters take
into consideration before they
rate the quality of a page. Having
these guidelines gives SEOs a solid

10. “How Search Works” is a great way to make sure you
really understand the basics of SEO, but it isn’t
giving us a whole lot of new information. Essentially,
Google is reminding us once again that they want to
see fresh, relevant content. My advice? Develop a
strong content strategy, create evergreen content,
and make sure you utilize high quality content
writing.

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