In 1995 (the early days of Yahoo – have a moment to reminisce if you were online back then – grey backgrounds, single column websites, crazy spinning GIF’s), optimization was born out of the roots of AAA, A#1 and Acme style yellow pages / white pages alphabetical optimizations.
This meant that if you wanted to be top of the list, you would name your site or business !@#AAA 123 Business – it seems insane now, but it worked. This was the first example of SEO – or the manipulation of rankings for your own gain.
In late 1996, search engines finally realized the work of databases to match text and how that would be applied to the greater database of the web.
In 1997, the first algorithm crackers appeared and this was quite basic by simply making up of pages in the results of many of the major search engines. The first major “page jacking” and “bait and switch” incidents begin to happen. This was when people copied the content from top ranking search engines for their own use, got high rankings and then switched the content to their own.
In late 1997, it was very easy for search engines especially Infoseek to crawl and index. In fact, back in the day it was possible to submit a site in the morning and have it appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in the afternoon.
Due to the easy indexing within 24 hours on Infoseek “Spam” became a very serious problem for the SE’s as deceitful spam sites began to understand the algorithms and how to manipulate them.
In 1998, the off-page optimization criteria of link popularity and directory listings had grown in importance of SEO as search engines tried to lessen the effects of just looking at the onpage optimization. At the same time, it had also revealed that multiple algorithm usage in search engines resulted in different top 10 positions in search results.
In late 1998 and early 1999, AltaVista (then the #1 search engine and had the biggest
index) made a fight against “too many URLs” and banned huge segments of sites and sites with auto doorway page generators. Google had introduced its page rank technology while the other search engines self destructed under management chaos and mountains of pages with no idea how to determine which was more relevant compared to other pages.
In late 1999, search engines had introduced PPC to make their service profitable. This enabled businesses to take a short-cut to the top rankings by agreeing to pay a small amount every time a surfer clicked on their link.
This meant that if you wanted to be top of the list, you would name your site or business !@#AAA 123 Business – it seems insane now, but it worked. This was the first example of SEO – or the manipulation of rankings for your own gain.
In late 1996, search engines finally realized the work of databases to match text and how that would be applied to the greater database of the web.
In 1997, the first algorithm crackers appeared and this was quite basic by simply making up of pages in the results of many of the major search engines. The first major “page jacking” and “bait and switch” incidents begin to happen. This was when people copied the content from top ranking search engines for their own use, got high rankings and then switched the content to their own.
In late 1997, it was very easy for search engines especially Infoseek to crawl and index. In fact, back in the day it was possible to submit a site in the morning and have it appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) in the afternoon.
Due to the easy indexing within 24 hours on Infoseek “Spam” became a very serious problem for the SE’s as deceitful spam sites began to understand the algorithms and how to manipulate them.
In 1998, the off-page optimization criteria of link popularity and directory listings had grown in importance of SEO as search engines tried to lessen the effects of just looking at the onpage optimization. At the same time, it had also revealed that multiple algorithm usage in search engines resulted in different top 10 positions in search results.
In late 1998 and early 1999, AltaVista (then the #1 search engine and had the biggest
index) made a fight against “too many URLs” and banned huge segments of sites and sites with auto doorway page generators. Google had introduced its page rank technology while the other search engines self destructed under management chaos and mountains of pages with no idea how to determine which was more relevant compared to other pages.
In late 1999, search engines had introduced PPC to make their service profitable. This enabled businesses to take a short-cut to the top rankings by agreeing to pay a small amount every time a surfer clicked on their link.
