20+ Years of SEO: A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization
SEO first entered our collective consciousness
during the mid-1990s. Learn about key milestones in its development along with
Google's role as one of its driving forces behind search engine optimization
(SEO). Throughout all its iterations over these two decades, SEO remains
fundamental.
SEO actually predated Google when co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1999.
Though SEO began shortly after the first website
went online in 1991 or when its first web search engine debuted in 1993,
"official" SEO began in 1997.
According to Bob Heyman's author of Digital
Engagement, we owe much thanks and credit for the creation of search engine
optimization to none other than the manager of rock band Jefferson Starship -
specifically, their manager John Avalos!
At that time, he was very outraged that the official
Jefferson Starship website ranked on Page 4 rather than Position 1 of some
search engine.
Though we will likely never know for certain if this
account of SEO's origins is more fiction or fact, all signs point towards its
creation in 1997. When researching further you'll discover John Audette of
Multimedia Marketing Group was using it back on February 15, 1997!
Ranking high on search engines was still fairly new
in 1997 and heavily directory driven; before DMOZ fuelled Google Search
classification, LookSmart used Zeal technology, Go.com maintained their own
directory service, while Yahoo Directory played an instrumental part in Yahoo
Searching capabilities.
If you are unfamiliar with DMOZ (formerly the
Mozilla Open Directory Project - back when Mozilla and Moz were separate
companies and brands - think Yellow Pages of websites), consider it like this:
DMOZ was like the Yellow Pages but for websites.
Yahoo was originally founded upon this notion -
helping editors locate only quality websites online. I began doing SEO as part
of our client services offering, to bring more traffic to sites which had built
great websites but weren't getting noticed by search engines. This service
remains relevant today!
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But then again, most people were still finding out
about the World Wide Web for themselves at that time. Now? Everybody wants to
dominate search engine results pages (SERPs).
Search Engine Optimization Vs Search Engine
Marketing
Before SEO became its own term, various terms were
employed such as: * Search engine placement. * Position. * Ranking (on search
engines). * Registration.* Submission of web site to search engines.* Website
promotion.
No discussion would be complete without also
including another term...
Search Engine Marketing. At one point in 2001, one
prominent industry writer suggested search engine marketing as a replacement to
search engine optimization.
Naturally, that didn't happen. Now is the time to be
wary; false claims such as "SEO is dead" or rebranding attempts (e.g.
"Search Experience Optimization") will abound in 2017.
Although SEO as a term might not be ideal - in truth
we're optimizing web presence rather than search engines - it has long been the
industry-standard term used for optimizing our presence online and likely
remains so for the foreseeable future. What about Search Engine Marketing
(SEM)?
Today, SEO remains an effective means of digital
advertising and search marketing; both terms coexist peacefully.
Search engines have revolutionized how we access
information, conduct research, shop for goods and services, entertain ourselves
and connect with one another. Here's a timeline that documents their history:
Behind almost every online destination - such as
websites, blogs, social networks or applications - lies a search engine. They
serve as our conduit and daily compass in life online.
But where did this all start?
To provide context to how search engines and SEO
came to play such an integral part in modern society, we've created this
timeline of significant milestones from their history. These can provide some
understanding into where search engines came from in its early days - though
their roots go much deeper! In essence: "Wild West" Era of SEO
At the close of the 1900s, search engine competition
was intensely fierce. You had access to both human-powered directories and
crawler-based listings like AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Excite, Infoseek Lycos and
Yahoo as options for search.
At first, SEO meant engaging only in on-page
activities. This involved optimizing factors like:
* Making sure content was relevant and good quality.
* There was sufficient text. * HTML tags were accurate. * There were internal
and outbound links.
If you wanted to rank well during this era,
repeating keywords enough times throughout your webpages and meta tags was key
to doing well in SEO. Wanting to outrank an entry that uses it 100 times?
Increase that frequency up to 200! Now called spamming. Here are a few
highlights:
Yahoo was initially created in 1994 by Stanford
University students Jerry Wang and David Filo in a campus trailer, initially as
an Internet bookmark list and directory for interesting sites.
Webmasters had to manually submit their website
pages for indexing by Yahoo in order for it to show up when someone searched
the directory. AltaVista, Excite and Lycos also launched search services at
that time.
Page and Brin, two Stanford University students,
created and tested Backrub - which would become Google eventually - as an
initial search engine with relevance algorithms based on inbound link relevancy
and popularity ranking of sites. HotBot powered by Inktomi also launched.
Following on the success of his Webmaster's Guide to
Search Engines, Danny Sullivan launched Search Engine Watch as a website
dedicated to covering news about search industry developments, providing tips
for searching the web more effectively, and offering information on improving
ranking websites better.
(Ten years after leaving SEW, Sullivan founded
another popular search publication known as Search Engine Land; today he works
at Google). Additionally, Ask Jeeves launched while domain.com was registered
for ownership.
Goto.com was initially launched with sponsored links
and paid search. Advertisers bid on Goto to rank higher than organic results
provided by Inktomi search technology; eventually Yahoo acquired Goto.
DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) became one of the
primary places where SEO practitioners would list their pages, while MSN Search
initially powered by Inktomi also entered this market.
Search Engine Strategies (SES), the inaugural all
search marketing conference, held its inaugural conference that year and read a
retrospective by Danny Sullivan here. (This conference series continued under
various names until it finally closed down in 2016.)
Yahoo's disastrous Google Revolution
In 2000, Yahoo made one of their worst strategic
moves ever in search when they decided to partner with Google instead of
Inktomi for powering organic results in their organic results pages.
Before Google became widely-known, they were
virtually unknown! That changed quickly when Yahoo search results included
"Powered by Google," effectively introducing its biggest competitor
into the public consciousness and helping make Google an iconic name that
everyone knew and used today.
Before Google launched their web crawler and
PageRank algorithm, search engines generally ranked sites according to several
criteria, including on-page content, domain names, ability to be listed in
directories such as Yahoo Directory or breadcrumbing of site structure
(breadcrumbing). But these innovations became revolutionary for information
retrieval.
Google evaluated both on-page and off-page factors
relating to websites - the quantity and quality of external links leading to
them (with regard to anchor text used), for example - when ranking websites.
Google's algorithm basically took this as evidence that something or someone
was important enough for people to discuss publicly; its reasoning being
"if people talk about you, you must be significant!"
SEO practitioners saw links as being at the core of
Google's ranking algorithm - thus giving rise to an entire subindustry
dedicated to link building.
Over the following decade, it became an arms race to
collect as many links as possible in hopes of rising higher on search rankings.
Link farming quickly became an abuse tactic which Google would need to combat
over time.
2000 marked the release of Google Toolbar on
Internet Explorer, giving SEO practitioners access to their PageRank score
(between 0-10) for instant analysis and increasing link exchange requests via
emails. Consequently, an explosion in unwanted link exchange request emails
occurred shortly thereafter.
So with PageRank, Google effectively introduced an
index-like measure to their linking - similar to domain authority being misused
today. Google also supplemented organic results with AdWords ads from 2000
onward.
Paid search ads began appearing above, below, and to
the right of Google's natural (i.e. unpaid) results in 2000, at which point
webmasters met informally at a pub in London to exchange knowledge regarding
SEO practices.
Pubcon was initially an informal gathering that
eventually evolved into the search conference series that continues today,
Pubcon.
Over time, SEO practitioners became accustomed to
what became known as Google Dance: an event during which Google updated its
index with major ramifications for ranking fluctuations and resultant ranking
shifts.
Though Google founder Sergey Brin once famously
denounced web spam as something he did not believe in, his opinion had likely
evolved by 2003. SEO became much harder after Florida updates as search
optimization became much more than repeating keywords X amount of times - thus
necessitating Google AdSense: Monetizing Terrible SEO Content as well.
Google unveiled AdSense shortly after their
acquisition of Blogger.com in 2003; AdSense provides contextually targeted
advertisements to publisher websites through AdSense ads that appear
contextually relevant for publishers' web content, prompting an explosion of
simple yet profitable online publishing - leading to what has since been known
as the blogging revolution.
Even though Google likely wasn't conscious of it at
the time, they were creating issues they would need to fix later on. AdSense
gave rise to spammy tactics and sites built specifically to rank well on
AdSense networks while earning clicks for advertising revenue - in 2003 alone!
And also something other important happened!
Search Engine Journal is still here and thriving
more than ever, thanks to my hard work in founding it in 2003! And thahttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-SXFTUnffwt makes
me extremely proud.
Since 2004, Google and other top search engines have
improved results for queries with geographic intent (e.g. locating restaurants,
plumbers or any other service providers in your town or city).
By 2006, Google unveiled their Maps Plus Box which I
found quite impressive at the time. Around 2004, search engines began making
use of end user information such as search history and interests to tailor
search results more closely towards each individual searcher's individual
interests and behaviors.
This meant the results you saw could differ
significantly from what someone sitting next to you at a coffee shop might see
when doing the same search query. Furthermore, in 2005 nofollow tags were
introduced as an antispam measure; SEO specialists soon started employing
nofollow tags as a form of PageRank manipulation.
Google also released several noteworthy updates: *
Jagger was launched, helping reduce unsolicited link exchanges that had become
prevalent, while signaling its gradual diminishing importance due to corruption
issues with anchor text as an SEO ranking factor.
* Jeff Manson from RealGeeks developed "Big
Daddy", an improvement to Google that would enable an enhanced
understanding of linkworth and relationships among sites.
Due to video SEO's immense rise, it became indispensable for brands, businesses, and individuals that wished to be found online. Google released two invaluable tools in 2006 that further expanded this strategy: video SEO toolset (vSEO) and AdWords Adwords analytics (AWA).
*Google Analytics. After its introduction, this free web-based analytics tool became so widely-used by webmasters that web servers experienced downtime and maintenance alerts.
* Google Webmaster Tools. Now known as Search Console, this service from Google allows webmasters to monitor crawling errors, see which searches your site was featured for, and request its re-inclusion into search results.
In 2006 XML sitemaps gained widespread support across search engines.
XML sitemaps allow webmasters to showcase every URL available for crawling on their site to search engines, making the entire website searchable by all. They contain not just lists of URLs but AI which enables smarter crawling of Universal Search results.
At first, search began evolving quickly in 2007. Through various updates aimed at providing users with an improved search experience. One such update was Google Universal Search: up until that point, results consisted of 10 blue links only. Now users could get much deeper results thanks to Universal Search's index of millions of websites, providing searchers with much richer results that include information beyond 10 blue links.Google then began mixing traditional organic search results with other vertical results such as news articles, video and images - likely making this their biggest search-related change since Florida update in 2004. It had major ramifications on both SEO and search users alike.
Cleaning Up the Cesspool
In 2008, then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated that
the Internet had become an overflowing cesspool and suggested brands were the
answer - saying brands "were how you sort out cesspool". Within six
months after Eric made this statement came Google Update Vince.
Big brands were suddenly seeing significantly better
SERP rankings; but Google wasn't trying to reward brands; rather they wanted to
put more weight on trust than before - with bigger names tending to have
greater trust than smaller, lesser-known ones.
Google quickly followed-up this update by unveiling
Caffeine to speed up indexing speed.
Search Engine Journal reported at the time that
Caffeine represented Google's next-generation search architecture designed to
deliver faster and more accurate searches that provide relevant, superior
results while accessing greater parts of the internet.
Google announced in 2010 that site speed would
become an official ranking factor. Bing and The Search Alliance soon followed
with similar statements regarding site performance as an important ranking
factor.
Microsoft Live Search became Bing in 2009. Soon
thereafter, in an attempt to compete with Google's near 70% market share in
U.S. search, Yahoo and Microsoft agreed on a 10-year search partnership deal
(though this ended up being revised five years later).
Search Alliance saw Microsoft Bing powering Yahoo's
organic and paid search results; while making Bing the clear Number 2 search
engine in America and globally. Unfortunately they failed to challenge Google's
immense marketshare; officially rebranding as Microsoft Bing later that month.
Our Social Media Future
Late 2000s saw another phenomenon emerge - social
networks. Google placed its bet with YouTube (though later attempted again with
now-defunct Google+).
However, other social networks, including Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn quickly emerged as major contenders (with others coming
and going over time). Alongside this surge of popularity for social media came
speculation about its impact on search rankings.
Yes, social media can play an indirect role in SEO;
as with other forms of promotion and advertising it drives more visitors to
your website and increases brand recognition/affinity which then creates search
demand for those keywords or topics of your choosing.
Google has denied social shares such as likes,
tweets and +1's as being ranking factors; yet various studies still cite strong
correlations.
To gain more insights into this subject matter, I
suggest reading How Social Media Affects SEO [Final Answer].
Schema markup was introduced as part of microdata in
2011 in order to help search engines better interpret search query context and
you can view every schema markup type on Schema.org.
Schema markup is not an authoritative ranking factor
and there's little evidence it has an effect on search performance; but, schema
can make your pages stand out by creating rich and featured snippets in SERPs.
Milestone reported at a Search Engine Journal
webinar they observed a 33-66% boost in search impressions for large fast food
restaurant chain locations after schema implementation was deployed, while
InLinks conducted experiments that revealed sites using schema gained rankings
by adding this metadata tag.
If you are uncertain that you have successfully
implemented structured data, use Google's Structured Data Testing Tool as a
diagnostics.
Google Zoo: Panda and Penguin
Two major algorithm updates released by Google in
2011 and 2012 -- Panda for 2011, and Penguin two years later -- had significant
ramifications on SEO that can still be felt today as Google attempted to
streamline search results while rewarding high-quality websites with priority
ranking positions in its indexes.
Google found its search results under intense fire
in 2011 as "content farms," or websites producing high volumes of
low-quality material, were dominating their results pages.
Google's SERPs were increasingly filled with
websites featuring unoriginal or auto-generated content - including scraper
websites which outranked content originators in some instances.
These sites were reaping huge financial gains
through advertising revenue (recall when I mentioned Google's self-induced
AdSense problem?). Furthermore, their livelihood depended heavily on organic
traffic from Google.
But as soon as Google's Panda update hit in 2011,
many websites experienced significant traffic losses almost overnight.
Google provided some insight on what constitutes a
high-quality site with Panda updates over time to eliminate low-quality (thin)
content sites, eventually becoming part of Google's core algorithm in 2016.
Google recently unveiled an over-optimization
algorithm designed to eliminate "aggressive spam tactics" from its
results pages, something many websites were still recovering from Panda.
Penguin was Google's algorithm aimed to eliminate
link schemes - websites utilizing unusual linking patterns with multiple
exact-match anchor texts which match keywords you target). This algorithm also
targeted websites which had excessive exact match anchor text links that did
not match keyword queries as accurately.
Google Penguin was designed to combat keyword
stuffing (the practice of repeatedly including terms you wanted to rank for in
order to achieve a high page rank) and was updated less often, sometimes taking
over one year between updates; nonetheless it became part of their real-time
algorithm in 2016. Things, Not Strings In May 2012, Google unveiled the
Knowledge Graph, providing access to vast informational knowledge bases through
which its algorithm would search.
Google introduced semantic search in 2003 as an
attempt to move beyond keyword strings in favor of understanding semantics and
intent. Amit Singhal, then Google VP for engineering described this milestone
event at launch:
Google Knowledge Graph enables you to quickly search
for landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings geographical
features movies celestial objects works of art etc. that Google knows about and
provide instantaneous answers that match up to your query. It represents an
essential first step toward developing search technology capable of tapping
into collective intelligence on the web as a means for understanding our world
more closely than it currently does."
Google improved their search results using this
data. Knowledge panels, boxes and carousels may appear when people conduct an
Internet search for one of the millions of entities and facts contained within
its Knowledge Graph database.
Hummingbird marked Google's second step into
next-gen search technology when it was unveiled in September 2013 as an
algorithm designed to handle natural language queries and conversational
searches more effectively.
With mobile search becoming the primary means for
searching, Google needed to reconfigure its algorithm completely to meet modern
searchers' demands.
Hummingbird marked one of Google's biggest changes
since 2001; their goal was to deliver faster and more relevant search results
to mobile users specifically. Since 2005 or so, industry members were asked: Is
This Year of Mobile?" Eventually it turned out not be 2005 nor even 2006
or 2007, let alone 2008 or 2009.
No doubt 2010, when Google transitioned itself into
being a mobile-first company was an eye-opener; but as 2011 progressed and
mobile growth continued apace it continued to gain ground as hype around this
topic grew progressively greater.
Smartphone users increasingly utilized them for
searching businesses and items while on the move.
2015 marked The Year of Mobile, marking the point at
which mobile searches overtook desktop for the first time on Google. While this
is true in terms of raw search numbers, search intent differs significantly and
conversion rates on mobile remain significantly lower compared to desktop.
This year was also marked as comScore reported
mobile-only internet users overtook desktop-only internet users.
Google's anticipated mobile-friendly algorithm
update also premiered in 2015; designed to give users "the most relevant
and timely results, whether on mobile-friendly web pages or apps".
Google introduced Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in
2016 in an attempt to speed up pages, with the intent of instantly loading
content for fast page load times. Many news media and publishers quickly
adopted and continue using AMP today.
Google announced in January 2017 that page speed
would become an SEO ranking factor for mobile searches. Also in that same
month, it said it will devalue pages with intrusive pop-ups.
By July 2019 all newly created websites were enabled
for mobile-first indexing; by March 2021 all existing websites will have
transitioned. Machine Learning & Intelligent Search I mentioned before how
Google, founded as an information retrieval company, evolved to become mobile
first company.
Well, that all changed in 2017 when Google CEO
Sundar Pichai declared Google as a machine learning-first company.aujourd Now
Google search aims to inform and assist, rather than provide links.
Google recognizes this, which is why machine learning
has been built into all its products - search, Gmail, Ads, Assistant and
others. Within search, we are already experiencing its effects with RankBrain -
see here
Since October 2015, when first unveiled by Google in
October 2015, RankBrain has been used to interpret 15% of new searches that
Google hadn't seen before based on what words or phrases users enter for
searching purposes.
* Users (and businesses alike) are increasingly adopting chatbots and personal assistants (i.e. Apple's Siri, Amazon Alexa and Microsoft Cortana) which signal exciting times ahead for SEO practitioners. Google Releases Core Updates Every day Google releases updates to its algorithm which affect SEO performance.
Google regularly issues core updates when there are
adjustments to its algorithm or broad core algorithm updates that aim to create
an enhanced search experience for users by providing more relevant and
trustworthy search results. These core updates aim to deliver enhanced search
experiences while maintaining user trust by offering relevant and trustworthy
results that improve the search experience for all.
These Google core updates do not target specific
pages or websites but rather aim to optimize how their system tracks content.
Google provides this analogy: "To better
illustrate core updates, imagine you made a list of 100 movies back in 2015. A
few years later in 2019, when refreshing this list again, some new and
noteworthy releases that never existed before may now qualify for inclusion; or
you may reassess some films and decide they deserve higher places than
previously."
Google released an algorithm update in March 2018
intended to benefit "under-rewarded" pages, and in March 2019
extended this change with Florida 2, also known as Florida 2. Both updates had
widespread ramifications on search results page ranks for certain URLs, making
these pages appear higher up in rankings for relevant searches than prior
years.
However, SEO professionals saw it more as a rollback
of previous algorithms. A major core update then occurred in June 2019 that
exposed weaknesses with E-A-T on websites focusing on authority and
trustworthiness of incoming links.
Google periodically releases broad core updates that
have an effect on all search results worldwide.
There was also a broad core update in September 2019
designed to bolster sites with overall optimal performance, followed by one in
January 2020 that specifically targeted your money, your life categories.
Broad core updates differ from narrow core updates
in that you must take an overall view when analyzing them; rather than
targeting individual pages specifically. As recently as May 2020, Google
released an update targeting thin content landing pages while increasing local
search results with their core update known as BERT (Brave Execution Response
Technology) update.
BERT, which stands for Bidirectional Encoder
Representations from Transformers used for natural language processing, is
Google's biggest algorithm update since RankBrain. BERT helps Google better
comprehend search query context.
BERT allows Google to dissect context to generate
better search results, like when Batman goes up to bat or when baseball players
bat for themselves. BERT helps ensure better search results!
BERT makes BERT even better as Google can use words
surrounding keywords to assist its spiders with digesting your content.
Google can now generate context models around each
word within a sentence - an essential aspect of natural language processing
identifying human communication.
Google's Danny Sullivan noted: Nothing about BERT
needs optimizing or revise; its principles remain intact as we attempt to
reward great content."
Dawn Anderson provides all the answers here on BERT
and featured snippets. Featured Snippets Perhaps you have seen featured
snippets before but were unclear as to their purpose? Rather, here is what Dawn
outlines about them here:
Featured snippets are small text blocks, bullet
points, numbers or tables that appear prominently at the top of Google searches
to provide answers directly without clicking through to websites. Their purpose
is to give searchers what they need without making further inquiries about each
website's product/service directly in SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
But be wary when viewing featured snippets; their
contents can be highly volatile and were first noticed back in 2014. Snippets
first surfaced back in 2014.
Featured Snippets have created the allure of being
at "position zero." That means your search result would be displayed
prominently above any competing distractions on SERPs and could also show up
organically in organic results.
Google implemented changes in January 2020 that aim
to streamline featured snippet search results so they would either appear as
featured snippet or organic result; not both.
Google announced an update in June 2020 stating that
featured snippets will now take users directly to text relevant to their search
query, with highlighted text highlighted yellow for easy reading.
Voice search will continue to advance and featured
snippet content can provide a massive opportunity for organic visibility
increases. Conclusion
Search engines and SEO have come a long way since
their infancy in the 1990s.
We've only covered some aspects of SEO in this post.
But the history of search engine optimisation (SEO) has been fraught with
dynamic developments: new search engines emerging, old search engines failing,
SERP features being added or changed altogether and constant tests and updates
happening over time - not forgetting great publications, conferences, tools and
experts in this space!
Search engines and SEO have changed significantly
throughout time; one thing remains true though: for as long as search engines
exist, SEO remains important - we've only just scratched the surface!
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