Google has led the charge with many mini-revolutions to the search engine landscape. Here is a look at some of the most influential with regard to SEO.
Released in 2011, Google Panda proved to be an early SEO-significant update by aiming to reduce the visibility of low-quality, thin content in search results. High-quality websites were rewarded with higher rankings at the expense of low-quality ones.
In 2012, Google Penguin hit the SERP. Penguin targeted black-hat SEO, specifically sites that were using manipulative link-building to try to boost their SEO unethically.
Google Hummingbird, released in 2013, focused on delivering search results that were relevant by examining the user intent behind the search query.
In 2015, Google issued the Mobile-Friendly Update which rewarded websites that were optimized for mobile and penalized poorly optimized sites.
Also in 2015, Google released RankBrain, which improved upon the Hummingbird by using machine learning to help Google better understand user intent.
Google has released many other updates over the years, but these are some of the most significant to make SEO what it is today. Learning how Google interprets search results can grant you significant leverage as an SEO specialist.
2 Responses
Thank you for that brief update on google history! that was super interesting to read and very informative.
This is really necessary information. One has to stay up to date as best as possible in the field of SEO because things are always changing as you pointed out. Well done.