A guide for SEO
Google is continuously updating the algorithm and adding new ranking factors to the list. Panda and Penguin were the big ones in 2011 and 2012, but there have been many others that have had a significant impact.
| 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 |
| 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
| 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 |
| 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
| 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
2024
MARCH 2024: Helpful Content Update – Integrating the HCU into the core algorithm.
MARCH 2024: Expired Domains Update – Indicating that using expired domains may now be considered as spam.
AUGUST 2024: An update of the HCU based on feedback from small businesses negatively effected. John Mueller’s statement.
DECEMBER 2024: A core update targeting web spam.
2023
FEBRUARY 2023: AI Update – stating that AI generated content will not be penalised as long as it’s helpful, beneficial and created for users rather than search engines.
SEPTEMBER 2023: Helpful Content Update – a third update aimed at helpful content.
OCTOBER 2023: Spam Update – Aimed at spam in Turkish, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Hindi, Chinese, and other languages.
2022
JULY 2022: The Helpful Content Update – this is another update designed to spot SEO focused content. It is similar to Panda in that Google has stated that too much ‘unhelpful’ content can affect ranking positions for the entire website.
DECEMBER 2022: E-A-T Update – to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust). This update added “Experience” as an essential factor in evaluating content and placed “Trust” at the center of the E-E-A-T framework, emphasising the importance of understanding the content creator’s first-hand experience and ensuring the trustworthiness of the content in providing accurate, reliable, and safe information to users.
2021
APRIL 2021: Product Reviews Update – rewarding in-depth reviews.
JUNE 2021: Page Experience Update – taking Core Web Vitals and Page Experience within the Google Search Console into account for ranking positions
2020
JANUARY 2020: Featured Snippets Update – Removed Featured Snippets from the organic results and made it a ‘promoted’ organic result.
2019
OCTOBER 2019: BERT – better interpreting natural language searches to understand the context of the user intent.
2018
MARCH 2018: Mobile First – Google now judged websites purely on their mobile website as opposed to the desktop version.
AUGUST 2018: Medic Update – had a major impact on health related websites. Related to YMYL metrics outlined in the quality rater guidelines.
2017
JANUARY 2017: Intrusive Interstitial Penalty – targeting popups and other intrusive features.
MARCH 2017: Fred – targeting low value content aimed at revenue over user experience.
OCTOBER 2017: Chrome Security Warnings – Google Chrome issues a warning to users before being able to access a website without an SSL certificate.
2016
FEBRUARY 2016: AdWords Shakeup – Google removed sidebar ads and took more space for ads above the fold of the page.
2015
APRIL 2015: Mobilegeddon – mobile rankings would differ for mobile-friendly sites.
MAY 2015: Quality Update – looking at ‘quality signals’ potentially related to quality rater guidelines and E.A.T.
OCTOBER 2015: Rank Brain – machine learning that handles user intent and semantic words more accurately.
2014
JULY 2014: Pigeon – further increased regional based search results based on user IPs.
AUGUST 2014: HTTPS/SSL Update – giving preference to secure sites.
2013
JUNE 2013: Payday Loan Update – targeting niches with notoriously spammy results, specifically payday loans and porn.
AUGUST 2013: Hummingbird – a user intent based update taking synonyms and semantic words into account.
2012
FEBRUARY 2012: Venice – a local update which appeared to tailor results regionally rather than nationally for certain keywords.
APRIL 2012: Penguin – After weeks of speculation about ‘over-optimisation penalties’, Google finally rolled Penguin. Penguin had a huge impact on the SEO community, impacting an estimated 3.1% of English queries.
MAY 2012: Knowledge Graph – taking even more real estate on the search results pages, Google introduced ‘Knowledge Panels’ including supplemental content and people, places and things.
SEPTEMBER 2012: EMD Update – a devaluation of exact match domains getting an advantage in search results.
2011
FEBRUARY 2011: Panda – A major algorithm update hit sites hard, affecting up to 12% of search results (a number that came directly from Google). Panda seemed to crack down on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and a number of other quality issues. Panda rolled out over at least a couple of months, hitting Europe in April 2011.
JUNE 2011: Google+ – Google attempts to take over the social media market with its own platform GooglePlus, which ultimately fails.
OCTOBER 2011: Keyword Encryption – Google announced they would be encrypting search queries, for privacy reasons. Ultimately this led to keyword data being hidden from SEO and only available to PPC customers.
2010
APRIL 2010: Google Places – now rolled out and officially launched in local search results.
JUNE 2010: Caffeine – optimisation of the Google indexing structure, allowing for faster results and updates.
DECEMBER 2010: Social Signals – long debated whether Google uses social signals, Matt Cutts appeared to confirm they do.
DECEMBER 2010: Negative Reviews – After an expose in the New York Times about how e-commerce site DecorMyEyes was ranking based on negative reviews, Google made a rare move and reactively adjusted the algorithm to target sites using similar tactics.
2009
FEBRUARY 2009: Canonical Tag – Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo jointly announced support for the Canonical Tag, allowing webmasters to send canonicalization signals to search bots without impacting human visitors.
AUGUST 2009: Vince – displayed signs of showing a preference for brands.
DECEMBER 2009: Real-Time Search – allowing for live updated feeds such as Twitter and News.
2008
AUGUST 2008: Google Suggest – suggested searches added as a dropdown in the main search bar.
2007
MAY 2007: Universal Search – integration of News, Video, Images, Local, and other verticals on the organic search pages. This is where Google started taking space away from organic search and into verticals owned and controlled by them.
2006
NOVEMBER 2006: Supplemental Index Update – duplicate content and other similar pages were added to a ‘supplemental index’ and placed outside of the main search results.
2005
JANUARY 2005: Nofollow – the ‘nofollow’ attribute was announced and made a requirement on paid links and other links not vouched for by the website owner.
MAY 2005: Bourbon – targeting duplicate content and canonical URLs.
JUNE 2005: XML Sitemap – added to Search Console.
JUNE 2005: Personalised Search – the first trial in tailoring search results based on users search history.
OCTOBER 2005: Jagger – targeting low-quality links, including reciprocal links, link farms, and paid links.
OCTOBER 2005: Google Maps – Google Places (now Google Business Profile) introduced.
2004
JANUARY 2004: Austin – A continuation of Florida, targeting invisible text and metadata stuffing.
2003
APRIL 2003: Cassandra – Targeted links from domains owned by the same person/company, along with hidden text and hidden links.
NOVEMBER 2003: Florida – Targeted keyword stuffing and a lot of the basic tactics that worked on search engines like Lycos.
2002
No major updates.
2001
No major updates.
2000
No major updates.
December 2000: Google Toolbar: Google introduced the PageRank toolbar so users could see the PR of their pages.
1999
No major updates.
1998
SEPTEMBER 1998: Google.com goes online.
Leave a comment