History of SEO industry

SEO aka Search Engine Optimization is a not that old, it is fun to look at its history. Web has involved from information to anonymity and anonymity to identity is last few years. It is just a historical tour of SEO industry (Data collected from many of the websites)

1990 – 1992

• The World Wide Web born with the launch of the first web server at the CERN research facility in Switzerland.
• No search engines required as the entire contents of the web mostly consisted of a few pages.

1993 (Netscape)

• The first web browser Netscape was developed.
• As the number of webpages grew people resorted to sharing bookmarked pages.

1994 (Yahoo was born, the directory era)

• The first directory Galaxy was launched in January.
• In April, Stanford students David Filo and Jerry Yang released Oracle, now known as Yahoo (arranging web in directories)
• The first true robot Web-Crawler is released, and begins to index the entire content of the Web.

1995

• The early days of Yahoo.
• Optimization was born out of the roots of AAA, A#1, and Acme style yellow pages/white pages alphabetical optimizations.
• Nearly a dozen search engines were now online. Names like Magellan, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek and Alta Vista was rolled out and quickly ruled the roost with its large database and advanced features.

1996

• The first concepts of density and location started to be used.
• The first papers begin to appear on the web about text matching, data mining, and interviews with search engine programmers.
• Light bulbs of understanding begin going off around the early seo community.

1997

• Webmasters were enjoying the rich picking of being on top of the search engines. Getting a site listed was easy, stuff the meta-tags and home page with keywords, submit your site; wait a few weeks and voila! You get the first page ranking for your keywords.
• Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms. The first algo crackers also appear.
• More specifically, several seo’s decoded all 35 parameters to Excite and were able to build pages precisely to the algo; thus, generating #1 pages at will. The first major “page jacking” and “bait and switch” incidents begin to happen. seo’s get code stolen and copied.
• Several se’s begin using Yahoo as a QA check. Thus, getting into Yahoo became paramount. Yahoo was flooded with submissions
• Se’s begin waking up to the fact that their sites are “portals” (in one door and out the other).

Late 97

• seo explodes as people began to see simple and easy results in 24hours on Infoseek.
• Spam becomes a very serious problem for the SE’s as unscrupulous spam sites began to understand algos and how to manipulate them.
• The first “clustering” of results appears and has a major affect on algo decoding.
• More page jacking incidents happen regularly. Hardly any top seo doesn’t have top ranked pages stolen and copied. Often copied into foreign domains out of jurisdiction.

1998

• Prerequisites such as link pop, directory listings, and listings age became the main parts of the new algo’s.
• Decoding algo’s became very sophisticated. Several optimization firms hired programmers to write efficient algo crackers.
• It is also the first time where a search engine used multiple algos for different top ten positions. Just because you could figure out what make a page #2 doesn’t mean you have a clue about #3 which was positioned using different criteria.
• The big rounds of submission spamming wars begin as people spam the submit urls with your pages. Some say it worked for several years to get competition banned in the se’s. Finally in late 98 se’s begin to understand what is happening and put a stop to it by limiting submissions.
• Hello ODP! The first independent, free, “open source” directory is born. They represent a huge threat to the traditional directories. Out of “no where” comes the first ODP flames at a time when everyone was in love with the ODP (was it an anti-odp plant by a competitor, or was it real? You make the call).
Late 98-early 99
• Altavista fights back with “too many urls” and banned any site if it said “we optimize” or “we promote” anywhere on it.
• Many seo firms begin falling out of the search engines in record numbers.
• Although the algo crackers are at their peak of performance, their utility falls as off-the-page factors such as link popularity become main stream in the se’s. Decoding what makes a page top ten has never been more difficult. Those that know, now spend 10 times (literally) as much time to acheive half the rankings they did in 98.
• Cloaking becomes almost mandatory on many se’s to protect rankings and code. It is unfortunately used by those not so interested in those factors and more interested in spamming for the sake of instant successes.

1999

• MSN and Yahoo were gaining in popularity. Slow dial up modems meant that websites were frequently timing out.
• Google hits the headlines to the tune of $25 million of venture capital and now handles over 500,000 queries per day.
• Webmasters and searchers were falling over themselves recommending Google and its fast results service.
• The effects of the end of seo begin to sink in.
• Link pop schemes explode.
• seo and traditional algo decoding techniques as we knew it, are all but relegated to the ash heap of history.
• Referrals begin to plummet as competition sky rockets and the web matures.

2000

• Realising that it wasn’t just a passing fad; companies were now paying good money for websites.
• The paid for play schemes and ppc schemes crank up in rapid succession in 2000. From Ink, to Alta, to even buying banners based on keywords – ppc and pfp is everywhere.
• Google solidifies its position as the new defacto search engine. The link pop craze of 99 begins to fade as it becomes very clear they are risky items – too easily tracked.

2001

• Bought and Paid for listings are everywhere.
• Unknown sites were suddenly catapulted to the first page of results and old long standing sites began to disappear…the infamous Google dance had begun.
• There is now a major difference in how se’s work and how to “work them”. Welcome to the era of “All Google All The Time”.
Many seo’s have sleepless nights as we realize it is “Google or Bust”.

2002

• SEO had grown up and the spam culling had begun. Things were changing; linking was the buzz word in Search Engine circles. Effective linking to quality sites and not linking through linking software or link farms was driving websites forward.
• Spam hysteria had hit, website owners were in panic not knowing if their website was about to drop.
• This was also the year that the leading search engines began to use more sophisticated technology to weed out spammers and apply penalties.

2003

• Things continued as they had done the year before, companies finally realized that their websites had to change if they wanted to get good listing in the search engines.
• Agencies and website owners who had lost out in the cull of websites turned their attentions to Pay Per Click. As a direct consequence of this renewed interest the cost of running a PPC campaign sky rocketed, forcing many small businesses into a corner.
• The biggest shake up to date was to happen in November…The Florida Update…this update uprooted the search positions for most industry sectors, businesses who had previously enjoyed good rankings shut down overnight. This was of course the precursor to Google generating extra revenue from its PPC system prior to its IPO in 2004.

2004

This was the year that the industry will never forget…
• In the aftermath of the Florida Update, webmasters, agencies and marketing managers were unable to understand what had happened. People didn’t know what to fix and whether it was better to ride out the storm. The problem is the storm continued and lasted many long months. For many businesses it was too late.
• People turned their attentions to Yahoo and MSN, but by now Google was just too strong and was the dominant search engine. The whole SEO industry started to change, as corporations and agencies turned their attentions to PPC – suddenly everyone became an expert and the stampede had begun.
• Organic Search was now dead. Google was now a force to be reckoned with, and it’s revenue had hit new highs…just in time for April’s IPO. All this had created a new era of Google millionaires…a far cry from the company’s humble beginnings.
• PPC had now established itself as a new niche and was seen by many as compliment to SEO.

2005

• The industry was still recovering from the Florida Update but it was also adjusting itself to the influx of broadband to UK businesses and households.
• The .com boom was now over and the industry had settled down.
• Search engines began to cut down on duplication.
• Google was developing new technologies and improving its search algorithm.
• Yet again a new industry had sprung up due to Google’s requirements that a site has links. Because of wide spread manipulation of this process resulting in some sites outperforming others in the search results – Google had developed a system of policing the process.

Let us know if you can add more to the list!

Information gathered from www.littlebigvoice.com and www.webmasterworld.com

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.