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
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
-
I'm hearing rumours of a Braod Core update
I'm hearing the jungle drums banging away about a broad core update this week. Anyone else heard this? Usually its retrospective and an oh my I've dropped/gained but I don't usually hear about it beforehand. Anyone else heard this?
Algorithm Updates | | Libra_Photographic0 -
How do you get a url to show as a tagline in google mobile search?
When searching in google via mobile, I am seeing urls changed to taglines. I have attached pictures that show the url in a web search, but a tag line from the mobile search. Does anyone know how to get a tagline to show in place of a url in a mobile search? Any advice would be appreciated! uLkYWRx.png wljXRI3.png
Algorithm Updates | | David-Kley0 -
What Ranking Factors Impact Google News Visibility?
I'm just at the beginning of a new analysis involving Google News visibility and ranking factors, and thought I could put the project out to you, dear SEO geniuses, to get your ideas and perspectives. Backgrounder: My company operates over 50 niche, disease-specific daily news sites, covering science, research and advocacy news about specific diseases. Virtually all of them are in Google News. They range in age from 3 years old to 3 months old. Varying degrees of page rank / authority Content on the site is completely niche to specific diseases, and we have a lot of sites for rare and orphan diseases. Most of the content is news, but we also have info/resources pages, blogs, and some short-form posts made for use in social media. The Project: I want to do an analysis of keywords in our news headlines and see how certain keywords correlate with articles that do well -- both in terms of search traffic and overall with users. Going to use our Multiple Sclerosis News Today website. Most of our search traffic comes from Google News. What I hope to gain: I'm curious to see if certain sets of keywords that relate to the disease, to therapies, etc. drive the most traffic. I want to compare these keyword lists to how well we rank in organic search for the same keywords (via news articles or info pages) to see if there is a connection. I want to also create a working keyword list of the best-performing keywords in the news as a way of cross-pollinating content production on our blogs, info pages, social content, etc. I want to increase my knowledge base of ranking factors specific for Google News. The last point is really something I wish I knew more about. I feel like there aren't many knowledge resources out there about Google News. Is it safe to assume that the same on-site and off-site SEO best practices that govern organic search engine visibility are at play in Google News, or are there independent factors as well? I'd love to get your thoughts. Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | Michael_Nace0 -
Unnamed Update — February 4, 2015
Does anyone have any more information about this shift in the search rankings. For us it seemed to affect few SERPs but those it did impact were highly competitive. I have heard speculation that it had to to with whether your site was mobile friendly or not. I don't believe this to be the case however since it impacted us nagatively and we have been mobile friendly (per google's test) since a year before this update. https://mza.seotoolninja.com/google-algorithm-change Our website has clean backlinks and all original content.
Algorithm Updates | | SB_Marketing0 -
Removing an old Google places listing for a newer version?
Hey there, I was wondering whether you could help me out on the following; One of our clients has a Google places listing that we created for their business but it appears to be being blocked - or at least conflicting - with an old listing. As such, Google appears to be showing the old listing with an outdated URL and company name - rather than the new one. Does anyone know how I can go about removing this listing or showing that the newer one is now more relevant? Unfortunately, I don't have the logins for the old places listing. Old listing; https://plus.google.com/105224923085379238289 New listing; https://plus.google.com/b/114641937407677713536/114641937407677713536
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Is it possible that Google may have erroneous indexing dates?
I am consulting someone for a problem related to copied content. Both sites in question are WordPress (self hosted) sites. The "good" site publishes a post. The "bad" site copies the post (without even removing all internal links to the "good" site) a few days after. On both websites it is obvious the publishing date of the posts, and it is clear that the "bad" site publishes the posts days later. The content thief doesn't even bother to fake the publishing date. The owner of the "good" site wants to have all the proofs needed before acting against the content thief. So I suggested him to also check in Google the dates the various pages were indexed using Search Tools -> Custom Range in order to have the indexing date displayed next to the search results. For all of the copied pages the indexing dates also prove the "bad" site published the content days after the "good" site, but there are 2 exceptions for the very 2 first posts copied. First post:
Algorithm Updates | | SorinaDascalu
On the "good" website it was published on 30 January 2013
On the "bad" website it was published on 26 February 2013
In Google search both show up indexed on 30 January 2013! Second post:
On the "good" website it was published on 20 March 2013
On the "bad" website it was published on 10 May 2013
In Google search both show up indexed on 20 March 2013! Is it possible to be an error in the date shown in Google search results? I also asked for help on Google Webmaster forums but there the discussion shifted to "who copied the content" and "file a DMCA complain". So I want to be sure my question is better understood here.
It is not about who published the content first or how to take down the copied content, I am just asking if anybody else noticed this strange thing with Google indexing dates. How is it possible for Google search results to display an indexing date previous to the date the article copy was published and exactly the same date that the original article was published and indexed?0 -
Google "In-Depth Article" Question
Google started featuring "In-Depth Articles" a few days ago. You can read about them here and here. I have two questions about them... If you already hold a great position in the SERPs. Let's say your existing article ranks at #2 or #3. If that article becomes one of the "In-Depth Articles", will it disappear from the #2 or #3 position? I have lots of content that I could mark as an In-Depth Article, but I don't want to do that if it will pull me out of a hard-earned SERP position. Has anyone seen "In-Depth Articles" that do not have the Schema markup? Thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | EGOL1 -
Panda Update: Need your expertise...
Hi all, After Panda update our website lost about 45% of it's traffic from Google. It wasn't an instant drop mostly it happened gradually over the last 5 months. Our keywords (all of them except the domain name) started to lose positions from top #10 to now 40+ and all recovery attempts we have done so far didn't really help. At this moment it would be great to get some advice from the top experts like you here. What we have done so far is that We have gone through the all pages and removed the duplicate / redundant ones. We have refresh the content on the main pages and also all pages now have an canonical tags. Our website is www.PrintCountry.com. Thank you very much in advance for your time.
Algorithm Updates | | gbssinc0