A lot of times when I'm out and about at a conference or in a forum, I run into folks that are new to search engine marketing and that are having a hard time wrapping their brains around the idea of a search engine update. For those that are still a bit confused, here's a bit of insight.

The reality is that engines like Google are "updating" almost continually...meaning that they are finding new pages, adding new data and shuffling the rankings as needed. What most people think of when they say update is actually a change in the algorithm. That's when you start to see some dramatic changes in rankings.

Matt Cutts, Google's most accessible voice in the search marketing world has a blog post on this topic that's well worth the read. Check it out: "What's an Update?"