Search Engine Optimization is basically a research work to rank high in search engines. It is a research work because the ranking of a site keeps changing according to the various algorithms of various search engines. An optimizers needs to keep a constant eye on these algorithms, study them and optimize their sites accordingly. Thus a SEO has a lot to study as there are so much search engines with their own algorithms. The most popular of these search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta-Vista, Lycos etc.

Search Engine Optimization Facts

Google Algorithms and Updates

Google is considered as king of Search Engines. It has most the most confidential and complex algorithm ever yet. Beyond, Search Engine Ranking Position [SERPs], it gives Page Rank to every site depending upon their back links. Still, it doesn't not allow you to increase your back links by any other means. Google updates their algorithms after sometimes and that algorithm update is considered very important among the optimizers. The recent algorithm update of Google ended up in December 2005 and was known as Jagger Update. It was the first update after Florida, which occur in November, 2003

Google Sandbox

Those sites, which uses unethical means to get good SERPs are banned or penalized by Google. One such penalty is Google sandbox. It is still not sure that whether Google Sandbox exits or it is just an assumption. Whatever it may be, this has been assumed that Google Sandbox is an algorithm which Google use to penalize any site. Once a site is in Sandbox, it can be suffer in various ways, like:

• The site is removed from Google SERPS, and Googlebot stops crawling or indexing it.
  

• The site gets crawled and but doesn't appear in the SERPs.
  

• The site can get sand-boxed on only one or few keywords, though the site gets regularly crawled and remain on SERPs for other keywords.
  

• Only few pages of the site can get sand-boxed while the other being treated normally by Google.