If you think that Google releases updates and introduces changes to its search algorithm just once in a while, you are entirely wrong.
These changes are introduced every now and then. However, sometimes they are so minor that they do not wreak havoc in the SERPs.
The quality of the search results that we have today is nowhere near the average quality we used to have a few decades ago. As you will see in the SEO Tribunal’s infographic below, Google introduced lots of major updates to establish itself on the market as the best and most used search engine.
Let’s have a look at some of the major Search updates that were released over the years.
The Beginning
Google started off back in 1998 by two Stanford University graduates – Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It made use of a mathematical algorithm to arrange web pages. The algorithm was mostly based on the strength of inbound links and meta content.
2003
Florida update was released, one of the first significant updates to its search algorithm. Keyword stuffing could no longer be used, and Google set an endpoint to eliminate spam content.
Many businesses were affected through this update, and some even disappeared from the search results.
2004
By 2004, the search engine had started using a range of unrevealed factors to improve its search ratings.
2005
In 2005, Google released XML sitemaps update that allowed website owners to submit the pages they would like to have indexed in the Google’s web index.
Google also released the personalized search update, thus collecting user’s data to make the search results more customized.
2007
The Universal Search update was released which was showing news, videos, and images. It was at that time that New York Times reported that Google makes use of more than 200 different factors to rank websites.
2010
In 2010, Google launched the Caffeine update which included real-time updates on the content thereby including the latest results on the provided query.
This also included Twitter feeds, Google news, and freshly indexed content. This was later updated to include other social media content as well.
2011
In 2011, another important update was released, named Panda. The update was aimed against websites which were duplicating content from other sites, exploiting ad-sense, and content farms.
Google also launched Google+ during this year and garnered 10 million users within two weeks.
2013
The Hummingbird update was launched in 2013 which caused another major change in the manner in which websites were listed and ranked.
2018
Forward to 2018, Broad Core Algorithm Update was rolled out that was meant to ‘benefit pages that were previously unrewarded,’ as explained by Google.
With Google working hard to improve its search results, we can sure expect to get even better and more relevant results to our queries in the nearest future.
To find out more about this and other fresh SEO facts and stats, check out the infographic below.
Infographic URL: https://seotribunal.com/blog/stats-to-understand-seo/
