A delegate on one of our SEO workshops, “Optimise”, send me this email soon after:

“After the workshop on Wednesday I tried to find a decent article on the algorithm  that Google or other search engines use – and there is nothing decent out there that would give an overview .”

The truth is, there is no such thing.  The Search Engines will never reveal their algorithms to the public as that’s be revealing their ’secret recipe’ that could be copied.  And, in order to keep ahead of the SPAMMERs, the criteria used to judge a website is constantly changing.  When I first starting giving SEO seminars 6 years ago I used to say “Google uses over 100 different criterion to judge your site”.  Now I have to say “Google uses over 200….”.

The trouble with using the Internet to find out SEO information is that any information posted more than a year ago could well be misleading!  And you’ve got a lot of techies and geeks fighting it out to bamboozle you!  Even those who wirte well and can explain things in plain English are guessing!

So, the only thing you can do is go to the ‘horses mouth’.  All the major search engines have excellent Webmaster Help topics.  They can get a bit technical, but generally they are clear and well-written.   If you really want to know what the search engines are looking for, you have to ask them!

Here are the links you need:

Google Webmaster Help
http://google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

 Bing (MSN / Live) Webmaster Help
http://help.live.com/help.aspx?mkt=en-us&project=wl_webmasters

Yahoo Webmaster Help
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/search/webmaster/webmaster-01.html

If you find any other sources that you believe are useful, please do post your thoughts here.

With warm regards,
Cat Young
STW Online
www.stw-online.net