Do we have a timeline of google, bing updates
-
I thought it would be handy if we had a timeline with dates of any updates to the algo's.
Does one exists here at SEOMoz or elsewhere.
Thanks -
Sure, if you have the relevant data at hand I can get my team to visualize it.
-
Thanks guys. what would be good is if SEOMOZ make a timeline page. it makes it easier to answer questions about lost rankings and such without havinfg to look them up each time.
-
I can't edit this post at the moment for some reason, but will include Vince when I can. This was definitely a big change, can't believe I forgot!
-
Nice. Can you do one for all the way back to 2003?
-
Hopefully the following infographic will shed some light
http://www.elevatelocal.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/google-algorithm-infographic.jpg
-
Great timeline!!!
I add 1 big Google update you've miss: Vince update in 2009 (February/March 2009), aka the Nig Brand Rank Update...
I believe it is important as, imho, we must see in it the 1st step of the actual updates.
-
Nice list.
These are the really big updates - the ones that are big enough that they grabbed the SEO community's attention. However, small updates occur a few times each week. These are small tweaks that gently steer and correct between major updates.
-
I don't think it exists really, but I reckon we can piece things together
2000 - 2003 :- Practically monthly updates, pretty much shooting in the dark to remember what it was the changes as I don't think anybody really understood things as fully nor monitored as closely.
Feb 2003 :- First 'named' update, Boston.
April 2003 :- Cassandra
May 2003 :- Dominic
June 2003 :- Esmerelda
November 2003 :- FLORIDA! Boom, this was the first one that made SEO what it is today. It started ranking sites in a way that nobody could fully work out. It blasted the spammers (although many quality pages were also effected if they were using the same over-optimisation/ stuffing techniques) and started the link race game that we have today.
January 2004 :- Austin. Hammered some more sites in a Florida type fashion. Seemed to introduce the QDF factor.
February 2004 :- Brandy.
February 2005 :- Allegra.
September 2005 :- Something funny happens here
October 2005 : - JAGGER! First step in the fight back against the new link currency. Recipricol links devalued, link farms devalued, paid links (where detected) penalised and/or devalued. Sandbox changes to make it harder to rank for new sites.
October 2005 :- Jagger 2. Domain age seems to play a bigger part of the algorithm.
October 2005 :- Jagger 3. Refinements to the first 2.
December 2005 to March 2006 :- BIG DADDY! Algorithm change to evaluate link trust. Non-thematic links, lots of recipricol links, lots of links on a page, lots of links from low quality sites all
August 2006 :- Lots of little things.
November 2006 :- Lots of minus position penalties for unnatural looking link profiles.
June 2007 :- Buffy. Not a real update apparently but there was one earlier that month which I think added some ridiculous penalties of up to -950!
April 2008 :- Dewey. Massive changes depending on what data centre you went through and changed SERPs multiple time each day. Google may have also given a cheeky little boost to their own intellectual property... Also think it was this one that started to stink up the UK search results with loads of foreign sites (not as xenophobic as it sounds, lol).
August 2008 :- Devalued exact anchor text links?
March 2009 :- VINCE! Also known as the brand update. Google gave a significant boost for sites that had a 'brand' (under the guise of 'trust'). Ultimately this moved the playing field to give the advantage to bigger sites with bigger budgets. Requires SEOs to improve visibility across sites to show that they're not a fly-by-night organisation. [Thanks Gianluca]
January 2010 :- Caffeine. Fresher results, more verticals, real time. Algorithm itself doesn't seem to change much. More of a sys admin change than anything.
May 2010 :- MAY DAY. Smacked some thin affiliates and pages with no content (auto-generated pages without products specifically).
December 2010 :- Started taking into account poor reviews and penalising those merchants. Black hats get to work reviewing their competitors. Perhaps the start of a bigger sentiment change with them also using Facebook and Twitter (though if that were the case I'd expect to never see Virgin Media in the search results :D).
January 2011 :- Content farms that scrape content take a hit. Harbinger of Panda.
March to April 2011 :- PANDA! Hammers (some) content farms.
All right, I'm probably missing lots of big ones, but if other people want to contribute I'm sure we can do something with this
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does Google giving more important to internal pages than homepage recently? Especially after the recent Major algo update?
Hi everybody, I can see the change Google brought in the SERP. Previously website homepages will be shown for primary keywords, now it's slowly and almost switched to showing most related internal pages in a website. You can check same for keyword "SEO", Most or all the results are internal pages. I can see this change for our primary keyword from last one month. So basically Google is trying to show a page explaining about the primary keywords rather than website, that's how "what is seo" pages are ranking than homepages. If there is no such pages existed or not well written, Google is just showing the website homepage. But I noticed that websites ranking with homepages are dropped compared to the websites with dedicated page about that primary keyword. Please share your thoughts. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google Open Graph
Hi I wanted to find out what makes Google select a site to show the answer to a question you type in search? For example, typing What is COSHH, brings up this site http://rospaworkplacesafety.com/2013/01/08/what-is-coshh-about-coshh/ and this answer top of Google SERPs. COSHH stands for 'Control of Substances Hazardous to Health' and under the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002, employers need to either prevent or reduce their workers' exposure to substances that are hazardous to their health.8 Jan 2013 Is it their open graph mark up only? Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey0 -
Why are organic search results vastly different on Bing, Google and Yahoo Search
We searched two words for a client so see how/where their site returned results. Depending on both the browser we used and the search engine, the results were so vastly different we were shocked. The site returned #2 or 3 on Bing and YahooSearch and not until the 3rd page for Google! And it also returned much worse on Chrome than any other browser, a Google product. I know this topic must be covered somewhere, or perhaps someone would be kind enough to chime in and shed some light? We have been working hard to optimize for Google and failing, but doing very well everywhere else. What gives?
Algorithm Updates | | jimmyzig1 -
Test site is live on Google but it duplicates existing site...
Hello - my developer has just put a test site up on Google which duplicates my existing site (main url is www.mydomain.com and he's put it up on www.mydomain.com/test/ "...I’ve added /test/ to the disallowed urls in robots.txt" is how he put it. So all the site URLs are content replicated and live on Google with /test/ added so he can block them in robots. In all other ways the test site duplicates all content, etc (until I get around to making some tweaks next week, that is). Is this a bad idea or should I be OK. Last thing I want is a duplicate content or some other Google penalty just because I'm tweaking an existing website! Thanks in advance, Luke
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
Wrong Google pin locations
Did something happen recently that would affect pin locations on Google Maps? I've been updating Google Places pages, but not touching the address or pins - but I received a phone call from one of my locations that their pin location changed in the past month and now it is wrong. Meanwhile, another department recently had MomentFeed update the pins for accuracy. Thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | SSFCU0 -
De-indexed homepage in Google - very confusing.
A website I provide content for has just suffered a de-indexed homepage in Google (not in any of the other search engines) - all the other pages remained indexed as usual. Client asked me what might be the problem and I just couldn't figure it out - no linkbuilding has ever been carried out so clean backlink profile, etc. I just resubmitted it and it's back in its usual place, and has maintained the rankings (and PR) it had before it disappeared a few days ago. I checked WMT and no warnings or issues there. Any idea why this might've happened?
Algorithm Updates | | McTaggart0 -
Will signing up for Google Places affect my national rankings
OK, Here is a question which I can't find but think people have thought about. I would like to know others opinion. I have had a site that ranks well under generic national keyword terms. (not geographically specific) Its a small website, only 10 pages. We get 85% of our business from online applications. These applications come from all over the united states.Our SERP rankings generate 70% of all our traffic. My question is this: we operate in a state where we don't do business. We are a virtual business. Should I sign up for google places? Will It hurt my national SERP rankings?
Algorithm Updates | | FidelityOne0 -
How To Rank High In Google Places?
Hello SEOmoz, This question has been hounding me for a long time and I've never seen a single reliable information from the web that answers it. Anyway here's my question; Supposing that there are three Google places for three different websites having the same categories and almost same keywords and same district/city/IP how does Google rank one high from the other? Or simply put if you own one of those websites and you would want to rank higher over your competitors in Google places Search results how does one do it? A number of theories were brought up by some of my colleagues: 1. The age of the listing 2. The number of links pointing to the listing (supposing that one can build links to ones listing) 3. The name/url of the listing, tags, description, etc. 4. The address of the listing. 5. Authority of the domain (linked website) You see some listings have either no description, and only one category and yet they rank number one for a specific term/keyword whereas others have complete categories, descriptions etc. If you could please give me a definite answer I will surely appreciate it. Thank you very much and more power!
Algorithm Updates | | LeeAnn300