History and Evolution of SEO

 

THE HISTORY OF SEO

Search Engine is a software system used to search data via the internet. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a set of modifications to improve and optimize search results. Google is one of the earliest and greatest search engines followed by Yahoo, Bing etc. Baidu is the search engine used in China where Google is restricted.

Google was co-founded by two university students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, for their university project in 1998. At the time Google performed as a sub-domain of their university website. And after the submission of the search query and Email id, the search results will be sent to the submitted mail id in 24 hours. By the time search engines were widely used all around the world but it saw a sudden hike after the Al-Qaeda attack at the World Trade Center on September 11^th 2001 as more users started searching about the incident and unfortunately Google couldn’t provide the requested information to its users. This led to discussions among the engineers detecting that not every webpage was crawled.

Search engines function through 3 processes. Crawling, Caching, and Indexing.

• Crawling is the first process through which new web pages are scanned by the search engine. The scanning program is called BOT also known as Robot or Spider. 

• Caching is the second process in which a screenshot or snapshot of the scanned webpage is saved into its particular database.

• Indexing is the last process where the search engine retrieves the requested data to the users.

In order for the 3search engine process to work smoothly, a guideline optimization practice was necessary. Thus a 32-page starter document called “SEO Starter Guide” was published leading to the birth of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

 

THE EVOLUTION OF SEO

The aim of Google was always been to provide the best results to its users. In the beginning, Google used Content specific or Niche specific methods through which websites were ranked on the basis of keywords. The ranking of webpages based on the keywords used on a webpage was known as Keyword Meta Tag. And thus in order to increase the webpage ranking, webmasters started stuffing keywords into their webpage, which is a black hat SEO technique known as Keyword Stuffing. To avoid such malpractice, Google changed its algorithm to Link specific.  Here the web pages are ranked based on the number of links a webpage receives from another webpage. This method of algorithm led to the selling and buying of links to help increase the rank.

The Quality link specific ranking was the next experiment by Google. Here web pages were given ranks out of 10. The rank of the webpage referred to the trust value of the webpage. 200 other factors were also considered while ranking the web pages. As before highly ranked web pages started to sell links to other webmasters which led to the new solution from Google called the “passing the juice” method. Through this method when a highly ranked web page gives links to other web pages, the ranking will be reduced from the former. Link value is the equity passed from one web page to another. But in case of mandatory references, Google started the “no follow mechanism” where reference links can be shared but link value or equity will not be reduced.

By 2008 Google showed more interest and growth in the field of advertising. Google Ads or Pay Per Click is a service provided by Google on its platforms. Cost per click and Cost per impression are two of its features. Google AdSense is a service by Google where website owners can display advertisements on their websites.

In 2009, Google introduced new features such as personalized search results, auto suggestions etc. User interaction was increased. And web pages were ranked on the basis of user interaction. When a web page has more interaction than a highly ranked web page, the former is expected a rise in rank because of the user interaction. This system is called Pogo Sticking. Bounce rate of a web page decreased with the high user interaction. as social media presence blew up in 2010, the influential accounts on these platforms also played a role in the ranking of Web Pages.