I started doing SEO in 1999 on a part-time basis on my own websites. And about 5 years after that it became my full-time business. But, back in 1999 I actually hired an SEO consultant to work on my website. And, I inadvertently sabotaged the SEO work by rewriting all of the repetitive keyword laden text into something more readable. This went back and forth several times before I learned how to make keyword-rich text readable.
So, I also learned a lot about how to rank a webpage back in those days. And, I became interested in how the search engines such as Google have evolved over time. There have been numerous algorithm updates to keep SEO’s and online business owners on their toes.
Since I began doing SEO here have been some of the major updates that have affected many websites (for better and for worse):
- Google Toolbar
- Cassandra
- Boston
- Austin
- Florida (oh, my, this was a biggie!)
- Supplemental Index
- Nofollow
- Google Local
- Bourbon
- Jagger
- Big Daddy
- May Day
- Caffeine
- Farmer
- Panda
- Penguin
Now, some of these updates are still ongoing. As of this writing, 10 days ago, Google rolled out its latest Panda update 3.92. And so it’s probably a good guess that Panda 4.0 is just around the corner. Hopefully this won’t roll out just before Christmas as the Florida update was back in 2003. And, if so, we’ll just have to deal with it as we have in years past.
If you’re an Internet history geek as I am you may find the following external links interesting both regarding Google updates throughout the years.
SEO Moz – this is a good reference from 2006 until today.
http://www.seomoz.org/google-algorithm-change
Florida Technology Journal – this has an infographic starting in 1998 until the first part of 2012. You may have to use the View / Zoom function of your browser to see it more clearly
http://www.floridatechnologyjournal.com/features/42-rokstories/1061-history-of-google-algorithm-changes-infographic
I like to look at the history of search engine updates since it may give some insight going forward as to how search is evolving and how my customers may benefit from such forward thinking.
