History and Evolution of Search Engine Optimization

HISTORY AND 

EVOLUTION OF SEO

From Back-rub to Google

In 1995, the collaboration of two Stanford computer science graduates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin had impacted in the creation of a new research project which later on changed the world. The outcome of this project was the company named Google that transformed the internet platform forever. 

 

Page and Brin started co-writing a program for a search engine named Back-rub. This name is derived from its potential to do back-link analysis.  Eventually, this led to the development of Google search engine.  In 1995, the very first version of Google was launched on the Stanford website.  Later on, with further evolvement, the search engine turned into a popular commodity.

In the initial times, Google's efficiency was not adequate to resolve queries instantly.  It used the e-mail facility to reply to the queries, which was not fast enough.  Yahoo was more popular than Google at that time.  This entire notion was changed with the attack on the World Trade Centre on 11th September 2001.  The officials of Google called upon meetings to resolve the inefficiencies of Google in addressing people's needs.  The conclusive aim was to make the websites crawl-able by Google bots (Google robot) and to furnish sufficient information of the database.  This highlighted the origin of Google's evolution.  

Web-crawling/Spidering

A web-crawler is an automated script which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner. This process of browsing the internet is known as Web crawling or spidering. Web crawlers are referred to as google bots, google robots and spiders.

Indexing

Google analyses the contents of a webpage by going through its images, videos and other information in order to understand the page better. This information is stored in the Google Index. This process is known by the name Indexing.

Webmaster

Webmaster refers to a person who has the code and access to the data of a particular website which he or she maintains. The webmaster can access this data to edit it accordingly.

Website Optimization

It refers to the process of using tools, experiments and advanced strategies to to make the performance of the website better.

Cache

A cache is a reserved storage platform that collects temporary data to help browsers, websites and apps load faster. It can be also referred to as a snapshot of a webpage that creates and stores after it indexes a page.

Spamming

It is using messaging structures to ship an undesired message/ unsolicited mail to massive no. Of recipients for serving the cause of commercial advertising by using phishing, plagiarism and so forth. When search engines find out a spam on a website, that web site is penalized.

Google gave a starters guide for the site owners so one can begin search engine optimization practices and popularize their web site. But this option was misused later and it led to the introduction of a brand new attribute. Namely, page ranking. The web page-rank decided a web sites relevance with the aid of contemplating the quantity of pages in conjunction with the importance of the pages and related again to the original site. Page ranking was then changed to content specific. Eventually they had to exchange the attribute from content specific to link specific. This alternate was inflicted due to spamming practices.

Content(niche)-specific

In this process, a page was given higher ranking based on the frequency of the focusing keywords used by the webmaster. This eventually led to a situation where focusing key words were used unnecessarily to upgrade the webpage ranking.

Link-Specific 

In this practice, a page is given higher ranking only when other webpages recommend the particular page. This is done by posting the link of the page on other webpages.

This feature was later improvised from link specific to quality link specific. Now, the page gets higher ranking only when authorized webpages recommend the same.

Keyword-stuffing 

It is a SEO technical in which keyword are loaded into a webpage's metatags, visible content/backlink anchor texts to gain rank advantage by unfair means. It is considered as a web-spam.

Black Hat SEO technique

It is an illegal and disapproved practice through which a page's rating is uplifted. As it is against the ethical procedure, the pages following this technique will be blacklisted by google.

White Hat SEO technique

This is a legal and approved technique by which the ranking of the page is increased.

Passing the juice/Link juice

Link juice is the colloquial word for link equity and it is a search engine ranking element based totally on the concept that certain links bypass value and authority from one page to some other. Links that pass equity are one of the many alerts that Google and different search engines like yahoo use to decide a web page's ranking. Equity of the page decreases while the web page passes the link to every other web page.

To overcome this dilemma, google brought rel="nofollow" attribution, that is added to the link. This attribute enables to pass the link without passing its value/equity.

Algorithm changes made by Google

Meanwhile, google made many modifications in the algorithm which wasn't identified due to the common addition and elimination of the changes

For instance, Google AdWords and Google AdSense services were launched in 2000. Google AdSense is for publishers and AdWords is for advertisers. Ads can be displayed in web sites and generate sales through AdSense service. On the opposite side, AdWords enables to display your ads on the Google search results pages, partner websites and all the Google display network.

One of the primary characteristic of AdWords is that, you're liable to make a payment only when a person clicks on your advertisement (pay per click). So essentially the money deposited for Ads in AdWords are invested in AdSense. An AdSense user should try to increase their ranking in order to generate income. But an update given by google anytime will lead to a drop in the ranking and thereby this affects the revenue negatively. The revenue from AdSense is indirectly the commission earned by Google. So, a drop in revenue of AdSense additionally affected google income as well. Hence the updates were not identified and eliminated in due course of time.

Changes reflected in the years 2009-2010

By 2009, there have been many updates like the Search algorithm Update(February), Webmaster tools, Search algorithm update(named Caffeine) and a few updates is the search categories. As the end result of these upgradations, google became more of a personal assistant than a mere search engine.

They had added customized search end result wherein your entire search result could be saved. Features for calculating, for apprising about IP address, climate update features etc.  Most importantly, web page ranking in keeping with users interactions and greater involvement became additionally introduced. Ranking here changed into the idea that if the person is happy with the website, he/she is meant to spend greater time on it.

By 2010, Google put forth an update called the social media signal update. A webpage is ranked high when it's shared in the social media. Eventually the site owners started out to depend more on social media for advertising and marketing and for that reason the quantity of stocks went up leading to greater interactions through social media. This popped up the ranking. So google recommended a brand new characteristic i.e., ranking is multiplied only when the webpage shared on social media systems get good reach and public interaction through likes, shares and comments.