A brief history of search engines and SEO

11 September 2017 | | Internet

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is perhaps the most important online marketing activity. With most consumers turning to search engines to find the answers to their questions, you will want to be at the top of the ranks when the search engines give them the answer.

But when did search engines originate? And how different was SEO?

1990: Archie, the world’s first search engine, was created

1991: Tim Berners-Lee launched the world’s first website – which is still live today.

Feb 1993: With more people becoming connected to the Internet, and more websites being produced, six Stanford students decided to create a search engine that organised results based on the keywords found within the content on websites. This search engine would later be known as Excite.

Jun 1993: World Wide Web Wanderer (Wanderer) was created. The Wanderer is thought to be the first web robot used to crawl and index websites.

Oct 1993: ALIWEB was created. It allowed the user to submit the pages they wanted indexed along with a description. The problem is that people didn’t know how to submit their websites.

1994: Alta Vista, Infoseek, Lycos and Yahoo! Search engines launched

During the primitive years of search engines they mostly focused on delivering results based on the keywords used on websites – cue the first SEOs.

The first SEOs quickly discovered the importance of keywords and went on to abuse this ranking factor used by these search engines by keyword stuffing. They found that the more keywords they used, the better they would rank and the more visible their website would be in search engines.

Search engines quickly went from a portal to the organised web to a muddled resource that contained some irrelevant results.

1996: Larry Page and Sergey Brin begin building a search engine called BackRub later to be called Google.

1998: Google is launched with PageRank technology. PageRank is a technology that Page and Brin developed to help measure sites based on quality metrics and not just keywords alone.

2000: Google begins to takeover the search engine world and constructs its Webmaster guidelines. The guidelines were created to help webmasters rank using white hat techniques instead of the spammy techniques used in the 90s.

But, it became apparent that Google wasn’t enforcing its guidelines and so SEOs continued their spammy techniques to secure high rankings.

2003: Google’s Florida update. SEOs still practising the spammy keyword stuffing technique had their websites hit HARD! As it was Google’s vision of becoming the search engine of choice for users it decided to take steps in providing more reliable and relevant results.

2005: Google, Yahoo and MSN united to create the Nofollow attribute to help decrease the amount of spammy links.

Nov 2005: Google Analytics was launched

2009: Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, is launched as a Google-killer

2010 – Now: Google have released a vast number of algorithmic updates to help improve the quality and reliability of its results. The updates to its algorithm aim to penalise sites with poor quality content and using manipulative strategies to rank. These types of changes Google are making only emphasise its focus on the user rather than website owners.

Sources:

Hubspot, Search Engine Land, Wordstream

More posts from our team


Previous Post:
Next Post:

Back to all news

Reviews2024
Five Star
Reviewed Marketing
5 gold stars
google review logofacebook review with 5 stars
"Excellent service from James at Dental Design, thank you very much for your prompt attention whenever I get in touch! Would definitely recommend to a friend" Alison Tarmey View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "Would definitely recommend to a friend"
5 gold stars
"As a dental practice manager I cannot recommend Dental Design highly enough. They are just brilliant at what they do. Lucy and her colleagues are just an email or a phone call away...." Emma Smith View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "I cannot recommend Dental Design highly enough"
5 gold stars
"Really great company to deal with. They always respond quickly and are truly reliable. I would 100% recommend, the staff are so friendly and helpful." Michelle Molloy View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "Really great company to deal with"
5 gold stars
"I got increased traffic and new patients applying to my surgery, once Dental Design upgraded my website. They are very professional, efficient & adaptive to new situations..." Joanna Gallop View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "Very professional, efficient & adaptive to new situations"
5 gold stars
"Lucy has been a star, responding to and acting upon our requests in a prompt, efficient and professional manner, as well as the rest of the Dental Design team..." Abhay Shah View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "I cannot recommend them highly enough"
5 gold stars
"...Since the website has been up and running Lucy Mander has been our point of contact. She has been invaluable and gone out of her way to help us, especially during COVID-19 lockdown... " Lucy Jones View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "Has been invaluable and gone out of her way to help us"
5 gold stars
"Thank you for all your help and support, and the provision of valuable learning aids for our patients and staff alike in these difficult times. We love the look of our practice website. Very professional!" Sandra Luck View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "We love the look of our practice website. Very professional!"
5 gold stars
"Dental Design stood out both in their knowledge of the industry and their professionalism and can-do attitude. All of their staff are exceptionally competent and knowledgeable..." Harvey Rook View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "Dental Design stood out both in their knowledge of the industry and their professionalism"
5 gold stars
"Having done extensive research into all the dental website companies, the team and package offered at dental design was unrivalled..." Neil Shah View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "The team and package offered at dental design was unrivalled"
5 gold stars
"The team at dental design (especially Rosie) are absolutely fantastic and are always on hand to help. They are professional, friendly and extremely efficient. Rosie always gets back..." KiKi Wilmot View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "absolutely fantastic and are always on hand to help"
5 gold stars
"Dental Design are fantastic to work with, our website is amazing and the support they provide is second to none. Our account manager Rosie L is a fabulous point..." Luke Lucas View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "Dental Design are fantastic to work with"
5 gold stars
"Having worked with the Dental Design team for the last six months, I've found them not only helpful, but friendly and approachable too. I bombard Marcus with regular..." Sophie Harper View Full Testimonial
Google reviews logo "always met with a swift and professional response"
5 gold stars
desk with branded documents