Evolution of SEO: History of Search Engine Optimization Progress & Adaptation
Learn about the development, evolution and history of search engine optimization.
SEO Evolution: Brief Introduction
How SEO started working?
Have you ever wondered how everything that works in SEO in today's world started?
It is believed that it was in the late 1990s when the term SEO was first ever used.
And since then search engine optimization started to build as an optimization process as the search engines evolved.
The way SEO works today began as a step-by-step process of evolution.
The workings of SEO today took shape gradually as steps and practice based on how search engines evolved to present best and relevant websites to the searchers.
Let us briefly go through how search engine optimization started working and evolved.
With this you will be able to understand better what is SEO and how SEO works in today's world, and why it works the way it does now.
So let us introduce you to how SEO came into existence and evolved.
This also helps to understand how it started working as an exercise and practice to optimize websites to gain better search engine ranking and visibility.
SEO actually evolved as a practice and became what we know it today.
First came the Internet, then the web and this started the world of search engines.
Somewhere in the 1990s search engines were created.
These search engines evolved from different catalogues or lists of sites or text files to the search engines that we know today.
This also created the need to present websites or web pages.
And there was the system of ranking.
The initial and traditional search engines would rank websites purely on how many times the sites used the keywords that someone is searching.
The key terms were the prime focus and they still are but in a different & clearer perspectives. This is why keywords are important.
After this came the stage where websites became important as the importance and advantage of website pages became the focus.
Here the web pages become important factor in evaluating relevance for searches.
As all this took shape, people started following it as the exercise to make their sites to improve rankings and appear higher as a result on these search engines.
This system has since been evolving through Google algorithms and updates.
And as these algorithms and its updates professionals, experts and the SEO community modified and improved their optimization to bring their websites up to date with the new parameters.
All these were incorporated as optimization techniques and steps that we are still following as SEO practice today in 2023.
So this is what made SEO what it is and how it mainly works.
History of SEO that made it what it is today
SEO has a history. The history of SEO is of change and evolution. The change is what remain constant in the world of search engine optimization and search engines. This is what has been driving the way we do SEO.
Change is the only constant in SEO, and will never change.
SEO is very dynamic area. SEO of the early 2000s was different from that of the 1990s. SEO of 2010 was again quite different from that of the early 2000s. And the SEO which we do now in 2019 is very very different from all the type, approach and method of doing it before.
Search engines keep evolving, their methods and algorithms keep evolving. The whole search industry, its related aspects and industries and their demands from search keep changing or evolving, technology is definitely changing so fast. Due to all this SEO also keeps changing.
What also comes with this constant change is the approach, methods of SEO which worked before may not work that well or may not work at all now.
To illustrate this, let us give you a brief look into the real life SEO evolution. When it started, somewhere in 1990s, and sometime later too, it was too focused on keywords.
All you had to do that time was put few keywords, repeat these as many times as you like and you will rank. The more times a keyword was repeated in the content, the better and more relevant that content was seen by search engines. Hence it ranked on the top.
It later became a spammy tactic and was called keyword stuffing. The focus slowly shifted to wholesomeness of the content.
What all this means is that you also will have to take a complete and wholesome approach to learning SEO. Start with a good SEO course. As you progress, keep learning through other online resources.
Do read SEO blogs, watch SEO videos. Find out about who all the top SEO experts and influencers and follow them or some of them. Be active on social media, join SEO groups. Ask questions online on these groups and on forums and read answers on question and answer websites.
All this will help you become an SEO professional and expert.
When we talk about history then Google Algortithms need a big mention. These algorithms are historical landmarks in the evolution of SEO as we see and do it today.
So, it is very important to know and understand the key Algortithms that Google brought. Let us look at few of these landmark Algortithms as they were announced or launched.
Important Google Algorithms
When you enter the world or SEO and for those like me already here, two things which we will always be hearing and reading about is “best practices in SEO” and “algorithms or updates”.
Google first created the algorithms. One of the best ways to understand these algorithms is to see these as set of functions and rules working collectively to evaluate so many different factors related to a website so as to decide its relevancy, position and rank in terms of various topics and sub topics which it talks about in its content.
Google’s algorithms are a complex set of systems that work behind search engines and basically set up and guide the way results are displayed. There are several such algorithms which look after different aspects of the functions of search engine.
Major Google Algorithm and updates that defined the SEO we do now
Let us discuss some of the major search engines algorithms and updates that changed and influenced the way page optimization and link building was approached and brought a change in the way search is seen or displayed.
Florida (November, 2003)
Google released its first major update in November 2003 which was called as Florida update. This was more of a filter. It is believed to have dealt with spam tactics basically related to high volume commercial search phrases. It covered heavy keywords based link tactics and the heavy use of affiliate sites. It covered issues like keyword stuffing, invisible text, hidden links, sites without a consistent theme.
Austin (January, 2004)
Austin was somewhere between the end of 2004 and the start of 2005. This was again an update which seemed to have covered things left unfinished in the previous update, Florida.
Austin update was again about the spam tactics in optimization and link building. It covered using invisible text in pages; stuffing meta tags and especially meta keywords tag with link unlimited keywords, to improve keyword targeting and optimization; using link farms to gain backlinks.
Brandy (February 2004)
With the Brandy update, what Google did was that it expanded its index enormously. The Brandy update brought to the SEO world the all important Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI. What LSI does is that it tries to understand the concept and them of a page by considering synonyms and natural language. It expanded and evolved keyword analysis. It also brought the concept of link neighborhoods (inbound & outbound links).
Nofollow attribute (January 1, 2005)
In a kind of a one off and revolutionary move, all the major search engines of the world: Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft introduced the "nofollow" link attribute. This was a move to tackle and reduce the link spamming that was being done by site owners who were freely getting all kind of easy links from blog comments, forums, guest post site, etc.
Typically sites where users can generate content easily were being used for spamming and links from these were to be considered as “nofollow” links.
A nofollow attribute tells search engines that the link should not pass on the page’s authority and that the link is not trusted or vetted by the site owner in some way.
Personalized search (June 2005)
Google introduced personalization concept in search. With every new search we do using search engines our search history starts building and taking shape. It records what all we searched and the patterns & preferences.
Google will now take note of a user's personal search history and also their language, location, and other proprietary information to provide unique search results.
Universal search update (2007)
While this was an algorithm update, the Universal Search completely changed the traditional search results landscape.
This Universal Search system changed the format of search results, shifting it from a traditional list of results to a now more dynamic mix of results which also show results from other searches like images, videos, news results, local results, books and more.
Vince (February, 2009)
Vince, which was not an update but a “minor change” according to Google’s Matt Cutts, actually changed the search results for some selected type of queries where Google thought factors like quality and trust were important when showing results.
As a result generic type of queries started showing more results from top brands, rather than small and relatively unknown smaller brands or websites. This way more quality and trusted results were now showing in the search results for these queries.
Google was hence also seen as strongly favoring big brands above smaller, less well known sites.
Caffeine (August 2009-2010)
Caffeine was a major infrastructure update by Google with which it aimed to improve and expand it's index system, speed up the crawling process and do more like accuracy.
Google proposed to launch a new and upgraded version of it's search engine. Caffeine was proposed in August 2009 and launched in June 2010, after a long testing through a developer preview.
Panda (February 2011)
The Panda algorithm update, came as perhaps the most important filter with largest and widest impact. This update affected about 12% of all search results. Rather than a one time change, this is a search filter, rolling out updates from time to time. It was announced in 2011 and since then Google has brought many updates to it.
Panda was mainly aimed penalize sites with low quality content, and especially content farms, and prevent sites with low-quality content from ranking well in search. The various content related issues it aims to tackle are thin content, low quality content, content farms, websites which had too much ads but very less content i.e. with high ad-to-content ratios.
Since, it is a search filter with regular updates it also means regular reviews. So, if a site was penalized during an earlier update, it has the chances of recovering in the next updates by improving content and correcting related things.
Penguin (2012)
Just like Panda, Penguin algorithm update is also a filter. Penguin basically deals with backlinks and not with content.
The penguin algorithm was released in 2012 to deal with sites that were following various types spam practices to manipulate and boost their search results. The main focus of Penguin was keyword stuffing and spam link practices or link schemes.
Penguin aimed to deal with all the black hat practices and remove sites practices from search results or penalize them who were following these types of manipulative.
Resources:
http://www.searchenginehistory.com
Google: Web History & Search History
Updates & Technicalities SEO Resources
The Google webmaster blog is the first thing that every SEO expert follows. It keeps you update with all the latest that Google introduces in SEO and that which applies to the SEO and search engine industry.
Resources:
This one is for advanced learning and learners. Do check it out once.