History and Evolution of SEO | Beno SEO Analyst

History and Evolution of SEO

During the initial times of Google, it wasn't a quality assured service. It was noticed during the world trade centre attack that people were not able to get the required information about the incidents from google. It came under discussion and they found out google's algorithm was not able to crawl the appropriate website and store it in the cache in order to provide to the users using a way of indexing whenever they request. In order to make website crawlable, they found that it can only be done by the webmasters. This method of performing modifications on the site is called on-page optimisation. Initially, a discussion was held to decide whether the guidelines to be published or not and finally starter guide was published to the webmaster. 

In order to optimise the website, google initially introduced the content-specific approach in which the website with most keywords will be ranked. Later, keyword stuffing was done by the people to make their website available which was a black hat SEO technique. webmasters focussed only on the keywords and so the quality of the websites was not considered.

Next method was the link specific method in which websites were ranked by considering the no. of times in which the site was referred by the people from other websites through links. A competition was held to put on the website links by giving money to other websites and those people took advantage of it and still the quality was not considered.

So they introduced the quality rank specific approach in which the site will be ranked only if the website is referred by a website with a higher rank. They introduced the page ranking which varies from 1 to 10 where 1 introduces the least and 10 introduce the highest rank. Only a few websites had ranking 10 out of 10 like twitter and U.S govt. website.

One of the strategy in it was "passing the juice" in which, if a website with a specific page rank gives numerous links to other websites, its rank decreases. Without losing the equality, they could provide the link with the help of typing rel=no follow in the anchor tab. 

During those days, users were increased in number and google became popular. Then they introduced the google AdWords in which people can advertise their products on google by paying to google and it became the main source of income. Adwords were customisable with respect to the time interval, people belonging to a specific location and it was displayed either in the display network or in the search network where the user views the Ad Word when he searches. The payment method was based on the CPC where google gets paid if the link of a particular ad is clicked.

Later they introduced the AdSense where we can display the ads taken by google on our website and google pays for us.

                       

During the year of 2009, many changes were done to maintain the quality of Google. Search engine became more interactive and they introduced the google assist. If the website is interactive, the ranking will be increased by analysing the website interaction using data centres. Bounce rate was the percentage of people who closes a site immediately and if it is higher, the site is not a better one. Pogo sticking was also introduced such that, if the interaction in one site increases more than another site that uses the same keyword, google promotes the one with more interaction. At that time, calculations were also implemented. They introduced the personalised search result also in which, if the account is logged in and we search something and later if we do similar searches, google will suggest us with early keywords and site by mentioning the period of the visit too.

In 2010, social media signals where introduced. If a website is shared across social media, its ranking will be increased. Then they considered the social media authority value based on the interaction in social media such as the likes. If the likes for two similar posts are the same, the influential power of people who liked will be checked.

   Updates

1. Panda Update

 It was done against the content spam.Implemented on 2011.

                           

Content spam included different types like    

Content duplication which is the copying of content from other sites


 Publishing the quality fewer contents consisting of spelling mistake and grammatical errors


 Content spinning which is the usage of the same content in different places


 Publishing thinner pages with lesser contents 


 Keyword stuffing 

Panda update was done in various stages and one of the important was panda 4.0 done at 2014 in which content duplication was prohibited and it was implemented as a permanent filter.

 2. Penguin update 

In 2012,it was done against link spam which consists of a link exchange, paid links, quality fewer links, link farming where links were exchanged inside a group, comment spamming where our links are given in comments, wiki spamming in which links were given in Wikipedia contents. All these were controlled in this updation. Guest blogging was introduced where we write a blog on someone else's website and giving links there which was punishable if it goes beyond the limit.

Further penguin updation was done in 2016 which is 4.0 where real-time implementation was done with regard to the punishing and all.

3. Pigeon update 

  It was also an important update which is related to local SEO. Local SEO are those who focus on marketing in a particular locality. Its procedures and steps were listed in this updation.

 4. Hummingbird updation 

 It was focused on giving deep info by analysing the feedback given by the users. If we search for a particular          thing, its detailed info will be given.

  5. Rankbrain 

   It was introduced in 2015, which was the upgraded version of hummingbird updation. In this, AI was used to guess the searches from the user even if he does not enter the exact keywords.

  6. Mobile geddon 




  It was implemented in 2015 where a mobile-friendly environment became important for ranking. Its second    updation was in 2016, where it was strictly implemented.

Some of the smaller updates are the park domain update in 2012, where blocking a website came into discussion and further actions were taken. Another one is the pirate updation which works on the basis of Digital Media Copyright Act in which usage of someone else's media on our website became punishable. Another one is the Exact Match Domain update in 2012, which took action against websites in keyword name and stays idle for a long time. Medic updation was done in 2018 with respect to the health and wellness related website which was a value-based updation. In 2017, bracket updation was done to control the review manipulations done by the webmasters.