So let's go from the start. The term SEO in technical terms is just a technique for all search engines, but the focus here is the birth of SEO and Google search. Search engines weren't officially launched until about two years after the launch of the World Wide Web by Tim Berners-Lee back in 1991. It wasn't until 1993 that the first search engines like Excite, AltaVista, and Lycos were launched, providing the first means to search the internet. These are now relics of the past, fossils you might say. The term SEO (Search Engine Optimization) wasn't coined until 1997, during the good old easy days of keyword stuffing and simple optimization of meta tags to rank on page 1. In 1998, Google finally came into the picture, founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

‍

‍

• Google’s PageRank algorithm essentially revolutionised SEO by ranking pages based on backlinks and relevance, essentially gamifying search engines. The rest is history.
• From 2003-2005, Google introduced its first major algorithm change, targeting keyword stuffing and poor-quality content, as well as the no-follow attribute as a way to combat bad, spammy link-building Blackhat tactics.
• In 2011, an update called Panda was released, targeting domains with low-quality content and content farms. In 2012, another update called Penguin was released, similar to the 2003-2005 update, targeting low-quality, manipulative link-building tactics. In 2013, an update called Hummingbird was released, focusing on understanding the overall context of content and its surrounding (LSI) keywords and the intent behind it.
• During the mid-2010s, another barrage of updates was released. In 2014, an update called Pigeon was released, improving local search results and making local SEO more important for things like NAP. In 2015, an update called Mobilegeddon focused on mobile-friendly websites in search results. In 2016, another update called RankBrain was released, focusing on understanding search queries better. An example is when searching for a flight to the United States, you might get searches that were the opposite; RankBrain was used to get a better grasp of search queries. In 2019, an update called BERT enhanced the understanding of natural language in search queries.
• In 2020, Core Web Vitals became important ranking factors, focusing on user experience on a page—things like the load time of a page, the interactivity of a page, the speed of responsiveness, and visual stability, such as buttons covered by an image and clickable things like that.
• From 2021-2022, more updates were rolled out, focusing on voice search and Google rich results. In 2024 and beyond, as AI evolves, we’ll continue to see SEO improvements in the future.