This document provides a history of SEO from 1994 to present day in brief chronological sections. It describes the evolution of early web crawlers and search engines like Lycos in the 1990s. Major developments include the launch of Google in 1998 and its PageRank algorithm, the rise of paid search with AdWords in 2000, and Google's algorithm updates over the 2000s like Florida, Panda, and Penguin that aimed to improve search quality and discourage poor SEO practices like keyword stuffing and unnatural links. The document outlines how SEO has grown to be a major profession, with nearly a million LinkedIn users identifying as SEO specialists today.
9. Lycos : one of the (1994) earliest crawler-based
search engines.
9
By 1997 it has indexed over 60 million documents. It
eventually outsources its search results to AllTheWeb.
31. Google launches Panda.
Its aim is to prevent sites with low quality content from acquiring
top-tier rankings. Google Panda forces SEOs to put more focus on
the quality of content they were publishing.
31