25 Years of SEO: 1990 to 2015

O Keyword Eye 259 years of SEO 1990-2015 Over the past 25 years, the way we live and work has been utterly transformed by the creation and evolution of the web. As the volume of online content has soared, search engines have become central to a vast number of our online experiences. Let's travel back a quarter-of-a-century to a time before tags, keywords and clickthroughs, to explore how SEO has changed and developed over time – and what those changes might tell us about the future! O Keyword Eye 1991 First website goes live 2011 346M 2012 697M 2013 1991 1992 1993 64M 51M 2005 2004 41M 673M YEAR 2003 WEBSITES 38M 2002 10 Websites Online 29M 2001 130 17M 2000 With a growing number of websites, there's an increasingly pressing need to organise and catalogue them. Early attempts to do this include Archie (1990) and Gopher (1991) – these are pretty primitive but they're widely regarded as the first search engines. "Google only loves you when everyone else loves you first:" Wendy Piersall Evolution of Search Engines... all excite 1993 YAHOO! WEBCRAWLER 1994 LIGHTNING FASTWEB SEARCH XLYCOS infoseek 2 1995 altavista 1996 Inkto m i° Ask Jeeves 1997 Google (1998 msn. 1999 alliheweb • 0o find it all 0 •. "Good SEO work only gets better over time. It's only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change" Jill Whalen The SEO Community 1997 Search Engine Watch launched by Danny Sullivan, providing tips and information about search. Sullivan and his team at Search Engine Watch launch the Search Engine Strategies Conference (SES.) SES is still going strong today, with events all over the world frequently attended by thought leaders and industry experts. 1999 2003 Search Engine Journal launched by Loren Baker. Aaron Wall launches SEOBook. 2003 Rand Fishkin launches SEOMOZ (now known simply as 'Moz') which quickly becomes one of the industry authorities on search. 2004 The first 'Mozcon' event is held. 2010 2011 Distilled – an online marketing agency – holds the first 'Searchlove' conference. The Google Revolution Google launched in 1997 and developed PageRank to rank websites more accurately – this is based significantly on inbound links, a factor that (when the links are meaningful) is still a useful tool today! This shouldn't be confused with the PageRank toolbar, later introduced by Google, which is now defunct. 2002 It's still possible to use backlinks to artificially make a page display for unrelated searches. Google begins contextual advertising with AdSense Florida Update – penalises tactics like keyword stuffing 2003 2005 Google Analytics launched giving SEO pro's a way to track and monitor their sites. BMW banned for 'cloaking' – showing users and search engines different content. 2006 2009 Google Caffeine - Google can index the web more often and provide fresher results. Real-time search. Google Panda lowers rank of thin, low-quality sites 2011 2012 Google Penguin – lowers rank of sites in violation of Webmaster Guidelines Google's 'disavow tool' which helps websites recover from penalties due 2013 to bad links. What can we learn from 25 years of SEO? The goal of search engines is the same as it always has been: to deliver the most suitable and appropriate content to searchers when they look for it, and to reward authoritative, high-quality websites. Over time, the search engines have evolved and black-hat practices have become increasingly penalised. Expect this to continue! Quality, informative, unique content will always be rewarded, so continue investing in great content. 3 SEO is increasingly competitive - you need the right tools to find low competition, high ROI keywords, and the fundamentals in place to achieve success in these areas. 4 Keyword Eye www.keywordeye.com Made by CO wyzowl 172M 206M 238M 121M 2007 85M 2006 6007 2008 ONLINE 2010 1994 1995 1996 8661 2738 23,500 3.1M 1999 2.4M 1997 257,601 Websites Online 1.1M