20+ Years of SEO: A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization

Practically everybody knows that SEO started in the mid-1990s. Learn about the key events in search engine optimization and SEO.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is very focused on Google today.

However, the practice we now know as SEO actually preceded the world-famous search engine founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

While it can be said that SEO and all search engine marketing material began with the launch of the first website published in 1991, or perhaps with the launch of the first web search engine, the issue of SEO “officially” began later, around 1997.

20+ Years of SEO: A Brief History of Search Engine Optimization

According to Bob Heyman, author of Digital Engagement, there is no one we can thank other than rock band manager Jefferson Starship for helping to breed a new industry that we can grow in knowledge by "improving search engine optimization."

You see, he was very upset that the official Jefferson Starship website was listed on page 4 of the search engine at the time, instead of Rank 1 on page 1.

Granted, we may not know whether this story is a history of further reviews or 100% true, all indicators point to the word SEO dating back to 1997.

Search a little and you will see John Audette of the Multimedia Marketing Group used the term since February 15, 1997.

Positioning the search engines in 1997 was still a good idea.

And it was called a directory.

Before DMOZ advanced Google's original division, LookSmart was powered by Zeal, Go.com was its catalog, and Yahoo Directory was a major player in Yahoo Search.

If you don't know DMOZ, the Mozilla Open Directory Project (remember, Mozilla was a company and Moz was a product before SEOMoz), was basically the Yellow Pages of websites.

This is what Yahoo was originally founded on; the ability to find the best websites as approved by the editors.

I started doing SEO in 1998, as a need for our clients to build good sites but receive less traffic.

Little did I know that it would be a way of life.

Then again, the World Wide Web was a good new idea for many people at that time.

Today? Everyone wants to dominate search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Marketing

Before Search Engine Optimization became the official name, other terms were also used:

• # Search engine placement.
• # Search engine position.
• # Search engine level.
• # Search engine registration.
• # Search engine submission.
• # Website promotion.

But no conversation will end without saying another word …

Search Engine Marketing.

Sometime in 2001, a prominent industry writer promoted search engine marketing as a successor to search engine optimization.

Obviously, it did not happen.

Get ready now; you will see many false claims (e.g., “dead SEO,” “new SEO”), as well as attempts to rename SEO (e.g., “Search Experience Improvement”).

Although SEO as a term is incomplete - after all, we do not improve search engines, we improve our web presence - it has been a popular topic for our industry for over 20 years now and will likely be in the foreseeable future.

About Search Engine Marketing?

It is still in use but is now strongly associated with paid sales and advertising.

These two words live in peace today.

Search Engine Timeline History

Search engines have changed the way we find information, do research, buy products and services, entertain ourselves, and connect with others.

Almost every online presence - whether a website, blog, social network, or app - is a search engine.

Search engines have become a connecting force and a guide to daily life.

But how did all of this get started?

We have compiled a timeline of remarkable events in the history of search engines and the development of search engines to understand the origins of this technology, which has become such an important part of our world.

The onset of SEO: The 'Wild West' era

In the last decade of the 1900s, search engine rankings became very competitive.

You have selected search engines - both man-sponsored indexes and crawler-based lists - which include the likes of AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and Yahoo.

Initially, the only way to do any kind of SEO was on-page activities.

This includes arranging for things like:

• # Ensuring that the content is good and consistent.
• # There was enough text.
• # Your HTML tags were accurate.
• # You had internal links and outgoing links.

If you wanted to rate this time well, the trick was to repeat keywords enough times for all your web pages and meta tags.

Do you want to pass 100 keywords? After that, you will use the keyword 200 times!

Today, we call this spam.

Here are the highlights:

1994

Yahoo was created by Stanford University students Jerry Wang and David Filo on a campus trailer. Yahoo was originally a list of online bookmarks and texts for interesting sites.

Website managers had to personally submit their page to the Yahoo directory to be listed so that Yahoo can find where someone is doing the search.

AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos were also introduced.

1996

Page and Brin, two Stanford University students, developed and tested Backrub, a new search engine that scales sites based on link links and popularity.

Backrub will eventually be Google. HotBot, powered by Inktomi, has also been launched.

1997

Following the success of Webmaster's to Search Engines guide, Danny Sullivan launched Search Engine Watch, a website dedicated to providing news about the search industry, web search tips, and information on how to rank websites better.

(Ten years later, after leaving SEW, Sullivan founded another popular search engine, Search Engine Land, and now works for Google.)

Ask Jeeves has also been released and Google.com is registered.

1998

Goto.com was introduced through sponsored links and paid search. Advertisers are bidding on Goto.com to rank above the natural search results, sponsored by Inktomi. Goto.com was finally acquired by Yahoo.

DMOZ (Open Directory Project) has become a much sought-after site for SEO professionals to get their pages indexed.

MSN replaces MSN Search, which is initially powered by Inktomi.

1999

The first marketing conference, Search Engine Strategies (SES), took place. You can read the retrospective at that Sullivan event here.

(The SES conference series continued to operate under various monikers and parent companies until it closed in 2016.)

Google Revolution

# In 2000, Yahoo released the worst strategy in search history partnered with Google and allowed Google to enable its natural results instead of Inktomi.

# Previously, Google was a less popular search engine. Absolutely unknown!

# Result: All Yahoo search results said “Powered by Google” and eventually introduced their biggest global competitor and Google became a household name.

# Up to this point, search engines rank sites based on-page content, domain names, the indexing capabilities listed above, and the basic website structure (breadcrumbing).

# But Google's web search and PageRank algorithm were a turning point in the acquisition of information.

# Google is looking at both on-page and off-page content - quantity and quality of external links pointing to a website (and the anchor text used).

# When you think about it, Google's algorithm was actually about "when people talk about you, you should be important."

# Although links were only one part of Google's ranking algorithm, SEO experts linked links as the most important - and the entire sub-link building industry was created.

# Over the next decade, there has been a race to get as many links as possible in hopes of being ranked high.

# Links have become one of the most frustrating strategies Google will have to deal with in the years to come.

# It was also in 2000 that the Google Toolbar was discovered in Internet Explorer, allowing SEO professionals to see their PageRank scores (numbers between 0-10).

# This introduced the email period of the request to exchange for the unsolicited link.

# So with PageRank, Google actually introduced a certain amount of revenue to its links. Like the domain, authority is being abused today.

# Google's organic results have also acquired a company in the form of AdWords ads since 2000.

# These paid search ads start to appear above, below, and to the right of Google's natural results (i.e., free).

# At that time, a group of webmasters met illegally at a bar in London to begin sharing information on all aspects of SEO in 2000.

# This informal gathering eventually turned into Pubcon, a series of major search conferences that continues to this day.

# In the months and years to come, the world of SEO became accustomed to the Google Google Dance, or the time when Google updated its index, sometimes leading to dramatic changes in quality.

# Although Google's Brin once claimed that Google did not believe in web spam, his views were likely changed by the 2003 rotation.

# SEO has been very difficult to follow reviews like Florida because it is more important than repeating X keywords several times.

Google AdSense: Monetized with the worst SEO content

# In 2003, after acquiring Blogger.com, Google launched AdSense, which provides context-based Google ads for publishers' sites.

# The combination of AdSense and Blogger.com has led to an increase in simpler, more lucrative online publishing - and the revolution of blogging.

# Although Google may not have noticed it at the time, they were creating problems that they would need to fix on the road.

# AdSense has developed spam tricks and sites designed for AdSense that are full of minimal/poor/stolen content that is there for proper placement, click-through, and monetization.

# Oh and another important event happened in 2003.

# I launched your site, Search Engine Journal!

# And I am incredibly happy to say that we are still here, going stronger than ever.

Local SEO & Personalization

# About 2004, Google and other top search engines began to improve the results of query-specific queries (e.g., restaurant, plumber, or another type of business or service provider in your city or town).

# In 2006, Google launched the Maps Plus Box, which I was impressed with at the time.

# And it was in 2004 that Google and search engines began to make extensive use of end-user data, such as search history and interests, to personalize search results.

# This meant that the results you saw may be different from those seen by the person sitting next to you at the coffee shop while searching for the same question.

# And in 2005, nofollow tags were created as a way to fight spam.

# SEO experts have begun to use this tag as a way to record PageRank.

# Google also introduced a few important updates:

• Jagger has helped to reduce the level of unsolicited link exchanges, as well as to announce a decline in the value of anchor text as a feature due to its corruption.
• Big Daddy (created by Jeff Manson of RealGeeks), which improved Google's design to allow for an improved understanding of the importance and relationship of links between sites.

YouTube, Google Analytics & Webmaster Tools

In October 2006, Google acquired a YouTube network to share user-generated $ 1.65 billion, making it the second most used search site in the world.

Today, YouTube has two billion users!

Due to its growing popularity, video SEO has become a staple for brands, businesses, and people who have been searching for it.

Google also introduced two of the most important tools in 2006:

• Google stats. This free, web-based tool was so popular when it was launched that webmasters met with expiration warnings and updates.
• Google Webmaster Tools. Now known as Search Console, Google Webmaster Tools allows webmasters to look at specific errors, see what your site is showing, and request a re-installation.

And in 2006, XML site maps gained universal support for search engines.

XML sitemaps allow webmasters to show up in search engines, all URLs on their website are available for clarity. XML Sitemap contains not only a list of URLs but also additional information, which has helped search engines crawl more efficiently.

Universal Search

We really started to see search begin to emerge in new and exciting ways since 2007.

All of these updates were intended to improve the search experience of users.

Let's start with Google Wide Search.

Up to this point, search results included 10 blue links.

Google then began to integrate natural search results with other types of specific results such as news, video, and images.

This has been a major change easily in Google search - and SEO - since the Florida review.

Cesspool Cleaning

In 2008, then Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the internet was becoming a cesspool and that products were a solution. "Products are the way you prepare a cesspool," he said.

Less than six months after his comment, a Google review called Vince appeared.

Big products suddenly seem to be at the best level in the SERPs.

But it was not really intended to reward the products, according to Google.

Google wanted to put more weight on trust in the algorithm (and big brands tend to be more reliable than smaller and lesser-known brands).

Shortly after this review, Google released another to improve their index speed, called Caffeine.

Speaking of speed, in 2010 Google announced that site speed was a quality factor.

Bing and Search Alliance

In 2009, Microsoft Live Search became Bing.

Then, to challenge Google's nearly 70% hold of the U.S. search market, Yahoo and Microsoft merged to negotiate a 10-year search agreement (although it was renewed five years later).

Search Alliance recognized the Bing capabilities of Microsoft Yahoo's organic and paid search results.

While making Bing the No. 2 search engine, they ultimately failed to break the major Google search capabilities in the U.S. and worldwide. In October 2020, Bing was officially renamed, Microsoft Bing.

Communication Growth

Another phenomenon was emerging in the late 2000s: social media.

Google has made its biggest bet on YouTube (though it will try again with the now-defunct Google+).

But other networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have all emerged as major players (and many more to come in the years to come).

With the rise of social media platforms came the speculation that social media brands could affect search rankings.

Yes, social media can help SEO, but indirectly - just as other types of marketing can help drive more traffic to your website and increase brand awareness and relevance (creating a search need).

Although the impact of public stocks (likes, tweets, + 1s, etc.) has been repeatedly rejected by Google over the years as part of the standard, it continues to be listed as having a strong correlation in different feature studies.

If you want to learn more about this topic, I highly recommend reading How Social Media Helps SEO [Final Response].

Schema

The schema map, a type of small data, was introduced in 2011 to help search engines interpret the context of the query. You can view all types of schema scams at Schema.org.

The schema is not a measure. Also, there is little evidence that support contributes to your search performance.

However, the schema helps you stand out in the SERPs with rich and featured captions.

For example, in the Search Engine Journal webinar, Milestone shared that they saw a 33-66% increase in search ideas for large fast-food restaurants after the schema release.

Another InLinks survey revealed that sites with schema gain levels once the schema has been implemented.

If you are unsure whether you have made good use of the built-in data, check out the Google Built-in Data Test Tool.

Google Zoo: Panda & Penguin

Two major algorithmic updates - Panda in 2011 and Penguin in 2012 - had a significant impact on SEO that is still felt today, as Google once again tried to clean up its search results and rewarded top sites.

In 2011, Google found its search results subject to severe testing because so-called "content farms" (websites that produced high-quality low-quality content) dominated search results.

Google's SERPs are also full of websites with authentic and default content - and, in some cases, scraper sites were the creators of high-quality content.

As a result, these sites have generated tons of advertising revenue (remember when I was talking about Google's self-created AdSense issue?).

These sites are also living and dying due to organic traffic from Google.

But when Google's Panda update was made in 2011, many websites saw a lot, if not all, of that traffic disappearing overnight.

Google has provided insight into what is important as a high-quality site.

Aimed at eliminating low (or thin) content, Panda was updated periodically over the years to come, eventually merging with Google's main algorithm in 2016.

As websites continue to recover from Panda results, Google has released a highly anticipated algorithm for optimal performance, which aims to eliminate "aggressive spam tricks" in their results.

Finally called Penguin, these link schemes are targeted at algorithms (websites with unusual link patterns, which include a high number of anchor text that exactly matches your keywords.

he wanted to rate) and the push of keywords.

Penguin has not been updated as often as Panda, passing a year among other updates. And, like Panda, Penguin became part of Google's real-time algorithm in 2016.

Things, Not Cables

In May 2012, Google launched the Information Graph.

This has been a major change in the translation of keywords into the understanding of semantics and purpose.

Google has improved its search results with this information.

Information panels, boxes, and carousels can appear whenever people search for one of the billions of businesses and facts on the information graph.

The next step in the next generation of Google search came in September 2013 with the Hummingbird approach, a new algorithm designed to better address native language questions and chat search.

With the growth of mobile search (and voice search), Google needed to completely redesign the way its algorithm worked to meet the needs of modern searchers.

Hummingbird has been considered a major change in Google's main algorithm since 2001.
In the right wo0rd, Google wanted to deliver faster and more genuine results, especially to mobile users.

Mobile-First

Since somewhere in about 2005 however, one question has been asked in our industry:

Is this the “Mobile Year”?

Well, it turned out that this was not the case in 2005.

Or in 2006.

It was not even in 2007.

Or 2008. Or 2009.

Not even in 2010 - when Google transformed itself into the first mobile phone company.

Then came 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014.

It was talked about and talked about because you grew up crazy all this time.

As more and more users adopt smartphones, they grew up looking for businesses and things while traveling.

Finally, in 2015, we had the Mobile Year - the point at which mobile search surpassed desktop search for the first time on Google. And while this is true in terms of immature search numbers, it is also true that the purpose of the search is very different and the conversion rates remain very low on mobile devices.

This is also the year when comScore reported that mobile internet users only outnumbered desktop users.

It was also in 2015 that Google launched the highly anticipated update of the mobile algorithm, which is designed to provide users with "critical and timely results, whether information on easy-to-use web pages or mobile applications."

To speed up the pages, Google re-launched the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) in 2016.

The idea of ​​AMP was to upload content faster. Many media outlets and publishers quickly adopted the AMP and continue to use it today.

Also, this may not surprise you, but in January 2017, Google announced that page speed would now become a standard feature for mobile search.

That same month, Google announced that it would begin to reduce the number of pages in its pages by interrupting pop-ups.

In July 2019, the first mobile index was enabled for all new websites. Also, by March 2021, all websites will have switched to the original mobile index.

Machine Learning and Smart Search

Earlier, I mentioned that Google, originally built on data retrieval, became the first mobile company.

However, that changed in 2017 because Google CEO Sundar Photos announced Google as the first machine learning company.

Today, Google Search is designed to inform and assist, rather than giving users a list of links.

That's why Google has built machine learning across all of its products - including Search, Gmail, Ads, Google Assistant, and more.

In terms of search, we have already begun to experience the impact of machine learning with Google RankBrain.

Announced in October 2015, RankBrain was originally used to try to translate 15% of searches that Google had never seen before, based on the words or phrases the user had entered.

Since then, Google has expanded RankBrain to work on all searches.

Although RankBrain affects quality, it is not a standard in the traditional sense, in which you are rewarded with a better rate of doing x, y, and z.

And there is more to come soon in the world of smart search.

• Voice search is increasing.
• Visual search has been incredibly good
• Users (and products) are increasingly using chatbots and using personal assistants (e.g., Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Microsoft's Cortana).

This technological advancement means that there are exciting times ahead for those doing SEO.

Key Google Updates

Google updates its algorithm daily.

However, all year round, Google releases basic updates where there are changes to its algorithm.

There are also extensive updates on the basic algorithm.

The goal of these key updates is to create a better search experience for users with more relevant, more reliable search results.

These key Google updates do not target a particular page or site but aim to improve the way the system tracks content.

Here is how Google described these key updates:

“The track to think about how important it is to revive performance is to make a list of the top 100 movies in 2015. A few years later in 2019, he updates the list. It will change naturally. Some new and exciting movies that have never been before will now be inclusion candidates. You can also check out some of the films and see if they fit the list. ”

In March 2018, Google confirmed that a comprehensive update of the algorithm was released for the benefit of "slightly rewarded" pages.

More than a month later, Google released another comprehensive algorithm update aimed at linking content.

Then, another comprehensive content update was released in August (sometimes incorrectly and incorrectly called "treatment" review) targeted at sites with low-quality content.

In March 2019, as an extension of the August 2018 major update, Google confirmed that a major update (a.k.a., Florida 2) was in place and should have been major.

However, the SEO community felt like it was reversing previous algorithms.

Also, another comprehensive update came in June 2019 that exposed E-A-T vulnerabilities on websites, focusing on the authority and reliability of incoming links.

From time to time, Google will issue a comprehensive update that influences all search results worldwide.

For example, there was a comprehensive review of the theme in September 2019 aimed at improving sites with high performance. Also, another comprehensive review of January 2020 focused on YMYL categories (your money, your health).

That’s the main difference with key updates compared to major updates - you need to analyze your site as a whole, not a specific page.

Recently, Google released a basic update in May 2020 targeting smaller landing pages while giving impetus to local search results.

BERT

BERT is the largest update to Google's algorithm from RankBrain.

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers used for native language processing.

In fact, it helps Google better understand the content of search queries.

For example, the word "bat" could refer to a nocturnal winged animal often associated with Batman. Or, it can be used when a baseball player comes up and hits.

With BERT, Google can categorize content to provide better search results.

What makes BERT even better is that Google can now use keywords around your keywords to help its spiders digest your content.

For example, "I went to the bat's den." Or, “After my bat, I went into a hole.” Google can now generate content for other words in a sentence. This is an important factor in how natural language processing determines human communication.

If you are still interested in learning more about BERT, Dawn Anderson explains everything you need to know about BERT here.

Captions included

You may have seen some captions that were included before, but you did not realize what they were.

Featured captions are text, dots, numbers, or tables that appear at the top of Google search.

The policy of the caption is included to answer the search query directly in the SERPs without the need to click on a website.

However, the included captions can be very flexible so step slightly.

Featured captions are nothing new. They have been spotted since 2014.

Featured captions trigger the attraction of the "zero point." That is, your search result appears above all other interfaces in the SERPs and will appear in natural results.

In January 2020, Google updated this feature to remove duplicate search results for embedded captions so that they can be included in the included caption or biological result, not both.

Also, in June 2020, Google released another update stating the now included captions that will direct users directly to the text related to their search query.

As voice search continues to evolve, the content of the included captions will provide a great opportunity to enhance the visibility of the organism.

Conclusion

We've touched on just a few of these methods in this post. The history of SEO is full of exciting changes - the birth of new search engines, the death of old search engines, new SERP features, new algorithms, and continuous testing and updates - as well as the emergence of good SEO publications, forums, tools, and experts.

Although search engines and SEO have emerged more and more over the years, one thing remains true: as long as there are search engines, SEO will always be important. And we have just begun!

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