The history and evolution of Search Engine Optimization

Hi,
Dper's!
I've just collected and thought to share these great info to my fellow DP members. Well, it's really hard to post all the info in a single thread when one have to cover almost years but I've managed that much i could or focused slightly over the key changes took effects from the very beginning of Search Engine Optimization.

Year 1993:
Netscape Navigator, modern world dawn arrived.


Year 1994:
1. Yahoo! launches its directory and was dominance as SE, key for SEO’s has begun.
2. WebCrawler, first text index of web launched and so the SE like Excite and Lycos came into existence.


Year 1995:
1. Infoseeks becomes Netscape’s default SE.
2. Yahoo! started crawler based search results for searches perform at Yahoo with help of its own directory!(Yahoo! Was almost dominating).
3. Internet Explorer came and started a browser wars, Hotbot and Lookbot arrived.

Year 1996:
AltaVista launched indexed based web crawler. It made dominance of On-Page Optimization. Yahoo! re-launched SE powered by Altavista.

Year 1997:
1. Development of SERP is developed in response to On-Page SEO.
2. Cloaking also becomes tools to protect codes.

Year 1998:
1. It was launching of Google, the most dominating SE of present time.
2. MSN also arrived with power of Intomi.
3. The browser wars won by Internet Explorer.
4. DMOZ launched, years to get listed in DMOZ was primary goals for many SEO’s.
5. First paid SE, Go To, launched.

Year 1999:
1. Danny Sullivan moderates SEO conference.
2. Google caught SE market shares and AltaVista changed to an internet portal.

Year 2000:
1. Yahoo! Decided to drop AltaVista and preferred Google for search results.
2. Google Adwords launched, was very disappointment for Google with responses.

Year 2001:
1. Google PageRank toolbar arrived, first time SEO’s are able to have a record of their PageRank.
2. Google also consider power of algorithm SE.

Year 2002:
1. First pade network, “PR Ad Network” came and brokers participate between sites. Google later punished those sites for paid ads.
2. Google Reconsider its AdWords as a CPC platform and rapidly cemented itself as premier paid SE.
3. Yahoo! Acquires Inktomi but still used Google search results while MSN continues with Inktomi.


Year 2003: Most phenomenal year for SE.
1. Google launched its blogging platform as blogger.
2. Google launched AdSense.
3. WordPress launched.
4. Textlinkads came into existence for paid linking and made easy to buy/sell text links.

Year 2004: Our DigitalPoint arrived in SEO world.
1. Yahoo! Adopts new algorithm for SE results.
2. 2. DigitalPoint Created co-op network.
3. Google start taking seriously to Sandbox.

Year 2005:
1. Google, Yahoo and MSN hand together to create nofollow tags to handle comment spam. It was also consider as PageRank sculpting.
2. Microsoft reconsidered its SE (MSN) and created its own algorithm for search engine results.
3. Google adopted “Jagger” tactics to provide much precise results.

Year 2006:
Year goes to support for XML sitemaps. All the SE involved developing this tactics.

Year 2007:
1. Google banned Textlinkads.
2. All the SE made a universal search.


Year 2008:
1. Wikipedia has more than 2 millions articles and participates vastly in SE results.
2. Microsoft launched Bing. Also, finalize with Yahoo! That will be Bing power the Yahoo as search results by end of the year 2010.
3. Launching of Google “Vince”, that shakes the SERP’s results for top queries and it would be more trusted by SE audience.

Year 2009:
1. Google tested “Caffeine” for faster indexing.
2. Google hands with Bing that both of them will allow Twitter to gain access to Tweets.
3. New canonical tags support.
4. Ask becomes Ask Jeeves.

Year 2010:
1. Google released its new indexing system of ”Caffeine”
2. Development of semantic search results for most relevant results.

Thank you for reading. Hope you like and must been curious to know these things before.
Mike. M.

 

"Great read, Thanks! Rep added for an excellent job!"

 

Wow! I can see a huge effort from your end while coming up with such an informative article. You really deserve a reputation. Keep posting such articles in the future too. This is what makes the DP even informative. Thanks!

 

yet another truly informative post I come across. I wonder how come you manage time to research all these things but sadly i can't see as many response as supposed to be. Anyway, thanks for the post.

 

Thanks it was interesting to read the history of SEO this could help you think of methods to use in the future.

 

Great info, Surprising how google rose to the opportunity when other larger companies had the market. Smart couple of guys or just lucky