Archive guide
Start Here
Friendly routes into Bill Slawski's writing for different kinds of readers.
Bill’s archive is large, but it has clear recurring trails. These paths are a good way to begin without needing to know the whole history of SEO by the Sea.
New to Bill’s Work
Start with posts that show Bill’s method: read primary sources, understand the mechanism, and explain what search engines might be learning.
- 10 Most Important SEO Patents: The Original PageRank Patent Application
- The First PageRank Patent and the Newest
- 12 Google Link Analysis Methods
- Just What Is Web Site Quality?
Search Patents and PageRank
Bill made patent reading approachable by connecting filings to search behavior, ranking systems, and practical SEO questions.
- Google’s Adaptive PageRank Patent
- New PageRank Same as Old PageRank?
- Replacement PageRank
- Search all PageRank posts
Entities and Knowledge Graphs
These posts are useful for understanding how search moved from strings and pages toward entities, attributes, and relationships.
- Answering Queries with a Knowledge Graph
- Google Knowledge Graph Reconciliation
- Entity Names in Google
- Search entity posts
Local Search
Bill wrote often about how search engines understand places, businesses, prominence, and geographic intent.
- Authority Pages for Businesses in Google’s Local Search
- Google Barcodes and Place Rank: Transforming Local Search
- Google Local Search Categories and the What and Where of Local Map Listings
- Search local search posts
Ranking Signals and Link Analysis
These posts are useful for readers trying to understand ranking, links, quality, trust, reranking, and user signals.
- 12 Google Link Analysis Methods
- PageRank, Self-Serving Links, and Domain Trust
- An Expansion of Importance Scores for Web Page Rankings
- Search ranking posts
Google Patents and Search Quality
This path is for readers interested in how Google patents may describe search quality, spam, query interpretation, and result presentation.