History of search engine optimisation
Posted on 25. Jan, 2009 by SearchGeeks in Search Engine Marketing
The history of our industry really begins in 1995, as a start-up company named Yahoo is just getting going. Since Yahoo began as a search engine, with its birth came the need for companies and websites to get their sites listed in the search directory….as high as possible.
In those early days, it was anyone’s guess as to where your site would land in a search directory’s listings. It was a matter of trial and error…until the concept of keyword density started to be noticed. That is, the more significant part a keyword played on a site, the higher it tended to land on searches for that keyword.
In those early days, you could get your site listed on Yahoo by simply submitting it to them. Usually the site was listed within three days.
Around mid-1997, it became more and more apparent that getting listed with Yahoo was essential. The company was inundated with submissions. Between 1997 and 98, Yahoo probably processed fewer than five percent of sites submitted to them.
In the late 1990s, search engines started realizing that they were portals to the rest of the Web, which meant people were there only a short time before leaving for some other place that the search engine itself directed them to.
Also around this time, spam started becoming a serious problem for search engines as unscrupulous website owners started manipulating the algorithms to point searches to their site, even if the search really did not apply to them. Spam rendered AltaVista and Hotbot nearly useless in late 1997 because of this problem.
Around 98 and 98, decoding algorithms became quite sophisticated. SEO firms hired programmers to design code crackers for that purpose. Site theft and page jacking became quite rampant. If you put up a top page on a search engine such as AltaVista, sites would steal the content and look of the entire site to eliminate the competition (accomplished because AltaVista would eliminate duplicate pages).
And of course, around this time, Google makes its first big splash. Their first build featured 25 million urls. The other big event: The appearance of the open source directory, posing a threat to traditional directories. Soon, to truly be successful on the Web, you had to be listed in Yahoo and Google.
Over the years, there have been drastic changes in the search engine methods and algorithms, which means it has always changed the ways to improve a site’s spot in any given search. But the SEO experts have always managed to crack the secrets to improving a web page’s performance.