History and Evolution of SEO
What led to the birth of SEO and how it evolved?
Google was an academic project
of two young men, Larry Page and Sergey
Brin, in the late 90s. Neither of them had ever imagined that their academic
project would become so popular and make finding information online easier. Initially, Google was employed as a subdomain of its creators’ university website where
the search results were forwarded to the provided email address. It took more
than 24 hours to complete this operation.
Internet usage had reached its peak by the year 2000. Following the Al-Qaeda attack on World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, many people who had access to Google searched for news updates. But, it failed to provide relevant results, giving a blow to those who were behind Google. Officials at Google met and discussed the issue. They found that Google was unable to crawl the available web pages to bring out the search results about the world’s biggest building. [The word CRAWLING in this context means the process of scanning a webpage by the search engine. It is one of the three processes Google does to get us to search results. The other two processes are CASHING (saving the snapshot of the web page according to the search engine’s categories) and INDEXING (providing the final result).]
Google decided to increase its efficiency by crawling more web pages. Therefore, it prepared a 32-page best practice manual or guidelines entitled ‘SEO Starter Guide’ for webmasters (the custodian of a website). As webmasters started using these guidelines, Google was able to crawl more websites and its service started growing, and so does its challenges.
Evolution of SEO
Initially, Google was content-specific or niche specific. When a user searches with keywords, it provides
those web pages which carried those keywords repeatedly. More the keyword, the higher the possibility of top page ranking. In other words, repeated use of
keywords in a website helped to increase a website’s Google ranking.
When Google search became
popular, more numbers of websites tried to get Google’s visibility and started
stuffing their pages with keywords to get top ranking. This black hat technique
(unethical practice) to increase the page ranking created a headache for
Google when they realized that the quality of search results is not as good as
expected.
So, they decided to make a
change in its algorithm. They started giving link-specific ranking. When a top-ranked page mentions another website and gives links to navigate to that page, it
is considered a vote. The website that receives more number of links from
other websites is likely to get top ranking.
Many of the websites managed to get onto the top ranking using this
algorithm. At the same time, many webmasters made use of this
opportunity and turned into link sellers, compromising the quality of the website
and their services. This again worried Google.
Then, Google proposed the quality link-specific technique, in which pages were scored out of 10. The trust value of that website was shown by the rankings. Here, in addition to the linkages, 200 additional parameters were taken into account. Then, high-rank web page owners began to sell links to webmasters.
Passing the Juice
Google, therefore, devised a new
strategy called "Passing the Juice." Webmasters with high page
rankings will see a drop in their ratings if they connect to other websites. The
value or equity conveyed from one page to another is referred to as link value.
Additionally, Google proposed a "no follow" mechanism that halts the
transfer of equity.
Why Google made repeated changes in its algorithm? And why it was concerned?
As mentioned above, Google changed its algorithm
whenever it felt that the quality of its search results are compromised. After
introducing the “no follow’ attribution, Google tried to implement various
changes in its algorithm, but it was highly concerned about doing so. What made
them so concerned? The story is as follows.
In 2000, when Google soared in popularity, it started a
program called Google AdWords, now known as, Google Ads. It is an advertisement
program designed to help businesses to find their customers in a customized
way. For example, a rent-a-car business in a particular locality can reach out
to its customers in that area by customizing its location. All you need is a
Google account for your business. It was
a huge success for Google, leading to the birth of major online businesses like
Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, etc. Adwords was a major income source for Google in the
initial years of 2000.
How it works?
Google AdWords service is similar to how a prepaid mobile
service works. When a business with a Google account decides to advertise its
products or services through Google, they will be asked to pay a certain amount
to run the advertisement campaign. Further, the advertiser is asked to set a
daily spending limit. For every click the advertisement gets, a certain amount
will be deducted from the daily limit (Cost Per Click aka CPC) and Google stops
showing ads when the daily spending limit hits. Here, the possibility for a lead to convert
into business is very high. CPC varies depending on various factors.
Following the success of Adwords, Google introduced Google
Adsense in 2003. Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which
website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images,
video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site
content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and
maintained by Google.
When a website applies for Adsense, Google checks it for its
trustworthiness and understands the character of the website. If it finds the
website eligible, Google will provide a Javascript code for the ads to be
inserted into the website. This code can be copied into the website and it will
be shown properly. If any visitor to the website finds the ad interesting and
clicks on it, Google will get a payment from the advertiser’s budget (Pay Per Click aka PPC) set for
the campaign. At the same time, the website owner earns a percentage as a commission.
Those who get Adsense approval will always strive to get
more visits and monetary benefits by adding quality content
frequently. If Google decides to change its algorithm at a time when a website
enjoys millions of visits and a handful of revenue and the ranking of the website
goes down due to the change, Google’s revenue from that particular website will
be affected negatively. That is the reason why Google hesitated to make
algorithm changes in the period from 2003 to 2008.
From 2008 to 2010
By 2008, Google brought in personalized search results, meaning when a person does a search while he is logged in to his Google account, Google displays results related to the word searched and based on the person’s search history. It became more interactive and in effect seemed more like a personal assistant who knows the interest of the person.
In 2009, websites that received higher traffic and user interaction topped Google ranking. Google also began to track user behavior and store them in
its data centers. This way Google collected every data regarding a user from the time the search started, the pages visited, and how much time the user spent on each page till the time of exit.
Google also started considering Bounce Rate as a metric for ranking pages. Bounce rate is defined as the percentage of visitors who do not interact and exits early. When the bounce rate is high, the ranking will be low.
Moving on to 2010, social media become hugely popular. In early 2010, Facebook—the world's largest social media entity—had roughly 400 million active users. Therefore, Google considered social media as a metric for ranking websites.
Those websites which got a higher number of social media sharing and interactions topped the ranking. Times when two sites gain equal ranking, then Google considered the influencer power as metric for ranking.
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