In the past, Google was not nearly as powerful or accurate as it is today.
Back in 90’s, search engines were little more than keyword-matching and link-counting machines. In that particular era, ranking highly in search engines could be accomplished simply by following the two-step procedure:
- Stuff your keyword phrase into your website as many times as possible (also known as “keyword stuffing” nowadays).
- Get as many inbound links as you possibly could.
For the early “SEO experts” who cheated the system by achieving high rankings while adding little values, their fun wouldn’t last long. Every time Google found a weakness in its system to deliver relevant and high-quality search results, they made fixes to address it.
One of the more recent Google search algorithm “fixes” was a mobile-friendly update, which put more emphasis on a website’s mobile-friendliness as a ranking factor for searches from a mobile device. The aftermath of this update was informally dubbed “Mobilegeddon.”
Are you curious on how the latest change stacks up against previous Google algorithm changes? To provide you a quick understanding of all of the major changes that Google has implemented over the years, please take a look at the visual history of Google algorithms over the last decade, presented on the infographic below.
