By Dan Price

Infographic by Ali Dieken

How important is it to know the vast history of Google’s algorithm updates? Since Google’s eclipse into the search engine universe a multitude of major updates, as well as thousands of smaller daily ones, have been made to fine tune the Google megabeast.

From reacting to the activity of users who try to cheat the system, to innovating in pursuit of creating a user-oriented platform, Google’s algorithm updates serve many purposes.

In looking at the history of these updates, you can get a pretty good idea of the climate of SEO in 2018, and the industry’s best practices. It’s interesting when you get into the actual updates, how relevant an update that was made in 2003 (10,000 internet years ago), still impacts the way we work in the SEO world today.

So back to the original question: should I get to know the different algorithm updates? I would say that is a resounding yes. For Google, algorithms are key to sorting and finding information. Not following their guidelines can result in users not finding your site. Knowing the history of these updates can play a crucial role in your ability to rank organically in your niche. Let’s talk about those algorithm updates and the history of search engines to better gauge why these major algorithm updates are so important to acquiring good keyword rankings and bringing visitors to your site.

The beginnings of Google and their Success

Let’s go back to 1998 when Google first burst onto the scene. The climate of the internet was so much different and was just hitting the mainstream. The internet had only really been around for 7 years and well-known for less than that. In the years after the internet was created, there was no way to search for things on the web. Users had to manually track and index webpages on their own.

Then, five years before Google existed, the first search engine was created. Enabling users to search for webpages based on terms they inputted into a search bar. Soon thereafter, many search engines started popping up – Web Crawler, Lycos, AltaVista, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, MSN Search, AOL Search, and many more. By the time Google hit the scene, there was plenty of competition, but still so much potential to innovate their way to the top.

And innovate to the top is exactly what they did. When Google went live in September of 1998, there were many holes in the way search engines operated up to that point. These major problems became the pillars for Google’s profound success. Some of these were the relevancy of search results, how fast users got their results, and the design of their website.

But how?

Proprietary Database: They created their own database, which hosts the data of websites that have been indexed and crawled by Google. This data is used to give the best results to their users search queries.
Instant Results: Google consistently generated millions of accurate results almost instantly every time.
Simplicity: Google has always stuck to their famous, yet simple home page. Just their Logo and a search box.
User Driven: Google refused to be a search engine driven by ads, but a search engine which provided ad space to users (PPC) in the search results page. This is how their search pages always maintained its simple look. This is unlike most of their competition whose pages, especially in the 90’s, were covered in ads and other things that took away from their search results.
Relevancy Algorithm: And lastly… You guessed it! Algorithms were created and consistently updated to generate accurate search results based on keywords, page rank, relevancy and other factors.

Google was founded on, and quickly gained popularity through an algorithm that consistently brought better search results than their competitors. The first update after their emergence in 1998 was implemented in 2002, and since then Google has come out with new updates every year since.

Some of these updates are categorized below into “Popular Updates,” “Black Hat SEO Updates,” and “New Innovations.”

Popular Updates

While there are countless updates that have been made over the last 20 years, these eight major algorithm updates shook up the SEO world, caused widespread spikes or dumps in rankings, as well as huge headaches for webmasters.

Panda (2011) – Rewarded high quality websites while negatively affecting sites with thin and/or duplicate content, spam and keyword stuffing.
Penguin (2012) – Monitored links in real time for validity and quality, down-ranking sites with spammy or irrelevant links.
Hummingbird (2013) – Focused on intent of the users’ searches rather than exact matching terms through high quality content and LSI indexing,
Pigeon (2014) – Created more symmetry between Googles’ local algorithm and traditional algorithm, changing how local websites do their on-site and off-site SEO.
Mobile (2015) – Gave the nod to websites optimized for mobile devices, while suppressing non-optimized sites from mobile SERPs.
Rank Brain (2015) – As an extension of Hummingbird, this update also focused on understanding the meaning behind users’ search queries.
Possum (2016) – Allowed search results to vary based on the users’ location, favoring results of businesses within a certain proximity of searcher.
Fred (2017) – Targeted low quality or spammy webpages or blog articles that were created specifically for ad revenue.

Black Hat SEO vs Algorithm Updates

Black Hat SEO is a term used to describe tactics that users have used in the past that Google not only frowns upon, but if caught will cause a massive decline in rankings. The following updates put a stop to shady optimizations that have been made in the past.

Cassandra (2003) – Hidden Text/Links
Florida (2003), (Also Hummingbird (2013), Panda 4.1 (2014)) – Keyword Stuffing
Brandy (2004) – Unrelated Anchor Text
Jagger (2005) – Link Farms
Bourbon (2005), (Also Panda (2011)) – Duplicate Content
No Follow (2005) – Comment Spam
Penguin (2012) – Spammy or Irrelevant Links

New Innovations

While it is easy to look at current Black Hat SEO tactics and correlate them with updates that made them obsolete, there are also many algorithm updates that have brought great changes and innovations that enhanced the way we search, the users experience and more.

XML Sitemaps (2005) – This gave webmasters the ability to control what pages on their site were crawled and indexed by Google.
Google Suggest (2008), Google Instant (2010) – Introduced a dropdown box of suggestions based on popular searches as well as search history.
Real Time Search (2009) – Certain SERPs were updated in real time to keep up with constant flow of new content from news feeds and social media.
Social Signals (2010) – Social media presence became a ranking factor with the growing popularity of Twitter and Facebook.
Schema.org (2011) – As a collaborative effort with other search engines, Schema was created to give them more context about a website.
Snippet Length Increase (2017) – The length of meta titles and descriptions were extended by almost double.

With all the updates that have been mentioned above, that doesn’t even scratch the surface as far as the total knowledge to be gained from Googles algorithms. If you would like to learn more, here are some great resources to check out and get started.

Resources:

https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-algorithm-history/
https://searchengineland.com/8-major-google-algorithm-updates-explained-282627

About the Authors
Dan Price is a Digital Marketing Specialist at ChoiceLocal. Dan is a local eccentric, in constant pursuit of the perfect Saturday morning breakfast spot, as well as the secret formula to the Krusty Krab’s krabby patty.

Ali Dieken is an Account Executive at ChoiceLocal, specializing in search engine optimization and speaking fluent Google Analytics, BrightEdge and Hubspot. She prides herself on going to a party and making friends with the dog.