History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization

History and Evolution of SEO

In this article we are discussing about the History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Search Engine Optimization is the methodology of techniques and strategies used to increase visitor’s count in the website, by achieving high ranking in search results. Before going deep into the topic, lets have a look at the history of google.



Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin as a research project while they were doing their PhD at Stanford University in California. It was not much popular at its early stages. At that time, search results in google were send to users mail id. In 2001, its popularity got increased after the tragedy of World Trade Center. Al-Qaeda demolished World Trade Center on Sep 11, 2001. After this tragedy people began to search more information about it, but  unfortunately google couldn't give more relevant information about the same. This made the google officials to think about the issue seriously. They found that most of the websites in google are not crawl-able. And  there arise a question that, how to make websites crawl-able?.


In SEO, there are mainly 3 processes in delivering search results: Crawling, Catching and Indexing.

    •  Crawling is the process of scanning webpages and identifying its contents.
    •  Catching is taking snapshots of  webpages and storing them in databases.    
    •  Indexing is displaying respective webpages  to users based on the input query.


Also we can categorize Search Engine Optimization strategy into two: On-page Optimization and Off-page Optimization. In On-page Optimization, we are optimizing within the webpage itself. These methods include giving internal links and relevant contents, keyword optimization etc. to make it more crawl-able. And Off-page Optimization refers to all the techniques that can be done outside the webpage in order to improve its search engine rankings. Google cannot modify websites directly, but its webmaster can. Web master is the person who maintain a particular website. So in order to optimize, google shared their optimization guidelines through a PDF called ‘SEO starter guide’.

keyword stuffing

In the beginning, websites were optimized based on the content. ie. they were content specific. If number of occurrence of keywords is more, then that website will be ranked high. This gradually leads to keyword stuffing. This practice of stuffing is a black hat seo technique. ie. non-ethical. It is done by giving keywords in blank spaces and they were hided from the user by giving background colors or by reducing its pixel size to 1.

keyword meta tags

There was another practice of using keyword meta tags for getting high ranks in search results. Meta tags are the words that are hidden. It can be used to get a summarized idea of the website  to the search engine. Meta tags were located inside the head tags. When people started abusing its use, google opted meta tags out of the ranking factors. An article about it was published in webmaster central blog of 21 Sep 2009.



Due to increased non-ethical practices google changed their optimization technique to link specific.  Webpages which get higher number of links will be ranked top in results. But this optimization gradually leads to concept of buying and selling of links. To solve this, google changed its tactics to quality link specific. For this optimization technique, they introduced  page ranking concept. Page ranks were visible till last year. Here webpages which have links from higher ranked pages will be more relevant since links from them will be of high quality. When pages are rated out of 10, google itself rated 9 and Twitter, US Government website etc. are rated 10 out of 10.

 

Passing the juice 

A new mechanism of passing power or equity to a site via links from internal or external sources is introduced by google. This was known as ‘Passing the juice’. This power is interpreted as a vote of recommendation towards the website and is one of the most important factors in determining rank of the website in results. In this mechanism the rank of higher ranked site will be deceased. To prevent this loss of power, rel="nofollow" mechanism is introduced. By using this, only diversion of audience to the pointed location can be done.

Up to 2008, google was afraid to carry out updates. Its because of  the huge loss caused from Pay Per Click or PPC. To understand this, we have to familiar two terms in SEO. They are Google Adwords and Google Adsense.

Google Adwords

Here we can advertise and promote through google by paying amounts. It is based on cookies and keywords determined by advertisers. When a  user clicks on the advertising copy, an amount will be cut off from the prepaid amount given by the advertisers and it is credited to the google. This amount is known as Cost Per Click or CPC.

Google Adsense

It is another program run by google to earn cash. Websites which have more visitors count are registered for google adsense. Advertisements will be given in these sites. Google can generate revenue on the basis of Pay Per Click, ie. PPC  and Pay Per Impression programs. Some part of this income will be given to respective website owners as their commission. Thus ranking of websites in results had an important role in maintaining visitors count and also in PPC. So when google carries out updates, some websites got re-ranked and it will badly affect google.



After 2008, google becomes more powerful and it acquires more companies. Google carried out strong algorithmic updates and a team for web spamming is formed. Web spam team was formed to eliminate spammers and to maintain quality in search results. Google gradually becomes interactive to users by giving google suggestions and more relevant informations. It acts as a personal assistant for users.

Pogo-sticking

 

During 2009, google  introduced website ranking based on user’s response. Cookies are added to collect user’s response. According to this, rankings take place. Websites with higher user responses were top ranked and becomes trustworthy. Pogo-sticking is a bad effect caused to the website. It occurs when a user bounce back from a website by the unsatisfied result. This will cause the website to get ranked low. Next in 2010, google introduced new method of ranking based on social media signals. Websites which have high social interactions and high influential powers were ranked high.

Important google updates

After 2010, strict updates were carried out by google. They are,

 

Google Panda Update

Google Panda update  released in 2011 was against content spamming. Content spamming includes:
  •    Content  duplication or content plagiarism.
  •    Content spinning.
  •    Thinny pages.
  •    Occurrence of spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.
  •    Irrelevant and less quality content.

Panda was updated from time-to-time. Panda 4.0 was released in 2014. Panda update was added as a permanent filter to google man’s algorithm for easy crawling. It thus eliminates content spammed websites or they were put into sand box, a place where untrusted websites were placed. In social media sites,  untrusted profiles were placed in sand box.

 

Google Penguin Update 

In 2012, Google Penguin update was released. This was against link spamming. Penguin 4.0 was released in Sep 2016. Link spamming includes:
  •    Link exchange.
  •    Link selling and buying.
  •    Having less quality links from outside source.
  •    Comment spamming.
  •    Link farming.
  •    Link referral.
  •    Wiki spamming.
  •    Excessive guest blogging.

 

Google Pirate Update

This was used to prevent piration of images, documents and multimedia files. If any piration  happened, we can file  case against them in google according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Google will mark the website as pirated one, notification will be send and it will be removed from the results.

 

Parked Domain Update

In 2012, Parked domain update was released. Here rich people buy domains  to start websites and to have links from them, but only some of them made live and others remained as it is. And these domains are known as parked domains. It was listed in google until this update was carried out. Domains will be unblocked if it is not renewed after certain period.

 

Exact Match Domain (EMD) Update

This update was released in 2012. It was used for webpages which are exactly matched to keywords. Webpages which are not updated further were removed.

 

Google Pigeon Update

 

Pigeon update was  in 2014. It focussed mainly on local ranking. Results were provided based on user location and local directory. Local interactions were mainly used as the basis of ranking here.

 

Humming Bird Update

Humming bird update was introduced to get semantic search results. Google here acts as an intelligent person by using artificial intelligence. Publicly accepted results were ranked top here. The main defect in this update was google will give results based on the feedback of users, whether it is correct or not. Advanced version of humming bird update was Rankbrain update, released in 2015.

 

Mobilegeddon Update

 

In 2015, an update called Mobilegeddon was introduced. It was used for the boosting mobile friendly websites. Thus non mobile friendly sites were removed from the results. This forced websites to make adjustments according to mobile responsive design.

Neena Johny