Name: Michael R. Halvorsen
I’ve been working with search engines since the web was young enough to fit on a few whiteboards.
I started in the late 1990s, back when rankings were unstable, bandwidth was expensive, and no one pretended that search was simple. Over the decades, I’ve watched algorithms change names, interfaces disappear, and entire industries form around misunderstandings of how search actually works.
My work has always focused on fundamentals: structure, signals, and systems.
I am not interested in shortcuts, trends, or tactics that only work until the next update. I care about how large information systems behave under scale, why some sites compound authority over time, and why others collapse no matter how much content they publish.
Background
I began my career working with early search engines and large directory-style websites, long before SEO became a formal discipline. As Google matured, my focus shifted from surface-level optimization to deeper architectural questions:
- How authority moves through large sites
- Why some pages are crawled and indexed immediately while others are ignored
- How internal structure affects long-term ranking stability
Over time, I worked with:
- Large content publishers
- Technical documentation portals
- B2B and professional service sites
- Long-lived domains undergoing multiple algorithm generations
My role was rarely about growth at any cost. It was about making systems understandable — both to users and to search engines.
How I Think About SEO
Search engines are not adversaries. They are large-scale engineering systems solving constrained problems.
From my perspective, SEO is not marketing. It is applied systems design.
The questions that matter most are:
- How does information flow?
- Where does authority concentrate?
- What structural signals reduce ambiguity?
Content quality matters, but only after structure makes that content legible.
Links matter, but only when they reinforce clear intent.
Everything else is secondary.
What This Site Is About
This site exists to document how search actually works in practice — not how it is sold.
Here you’ll find:
- Analysis of foundational concepts like PageRank, crawl behavior, and site architecture
- Explanations grounded in real-world behavior, not theory alone
- Long-form writing intended to age well, not chase updates
I don’t publish frequently. I publish when there is something worth clarifying.
What You Will Not Find Here
- Growth hacks
- Tool reviews
- Affiliate links
- SEO checklists designed for beginners
Those topics are covered elsewhere, often loudly.
This site is written for people who already understand the basics and want to reason about search at a deeper level.
Closing Note
After more than two decades in search, one lesson stands out:
Systems reward clarity and punish noise.
That principle has held through every major algorithm shift so far. I see no reason to expect it to change.
If you approach SEO as infrastructure rather than manipulation, the results tend to last.
That is the perspective reflected in everything published here.