Search engine optimization
[5] According to a 2004 article by former industry analyst and current Google employee Danny Sullivan, the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997.
[6] Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword meta tag or index files in engines like ALIWEB.
Using metadata to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content.
Flawed data in meta tags, such as those that were inaccurate or incomplete, created the potential for pages to be mischaracterized in irrelevant searches.
[7][dubious – discuss] Web content providers also manipulated attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.
Early search engines, such as Altavista and Infoseek, adjusted their algorithms to prevent webmasters from manipulating rankings.
[9] By heavily relying on factors such as keyword density, which were exclusively within a webmaster's control, early search engines suffered from abuse and ranking manipulation.
[10] Search engines responded by developing more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account additional factors that were more difficult for webmasters to manipulate.
[18] By 2004, search engines had incorporated a wide range of undisclosed factors in their ranking algorithms to reduce the impact of link manipulation.
[19] The leading search engines, Google, Bing, and Yahoo, do not disclose the algorithms they use to rank pages.
Some SEO practitioners have studied different approaches to search engine optimization and have shared their personal opinions.
[23] On June 15, 2009, Google disclosed that they had taken measures to mitigate the effects of PageRank sculpting by use of the nofollow attribute on links.
In order to avoid the above, SEO engineers developed alternative techniques that replace nofollowed tags with obfuscated JavaScript and thus permit PageRank sculpting.
According to Carrie Grimes, the software engineer who announced Caffeine for Google, "Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index..."[27] Google Instant, real-time-search, was introduced in late 2010 in an attempt to make search results more timely and relevant.
Historically site administrators have spent months or even years optimizing a website to increase search rankings.
With the growth in popularity of social media sites and blogs, the leading engines made changes to their algorithms to allow fresh content to rank quickly within the search results.
[29] The 2012 Google Penguin attempted to penalize websites that used manipulative techniques to improve their rankings on the search engine.
In October 2019, Google announced they would start applying BERT models for English language search queries in the US.
Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) was another attempt by Google to improve their natural language processing, but this time in order to better understand the search queries of their users.
[41] In December 2019, Google began updating the User-Agent string of their crawler to reflect the latest Chrome version used by their rendering service.
Updating content so as to keep search engines crawling back frequently can give additional weight to a site.
[48] An SEO technique is considered a white hat if it conforms to the search engines' guidelines and involves no deception.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by the search engines or involve deception.
Search engines may penalize sites they discover using black or grey hat methods, either by reducing their rankings or eliminating their listings from their databases altogether.
[52] Companies that employ black hat techniques or other spammy tactics can get their client websites banned from the search results.
In 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported on a company, Traffic Power, which allegedly used high-risk techniques and failed to disclose those risks to its clients.
[62] It is considered a wise business practice for website operators to liberate themselves from dependence on search engine traffic.
[69] Successful search engine optimization (SEO) for international markets requires more than just translating web pages.
This includes conducting keyword research for each market, using hreflang tags to target the right languages, and building local backlinks.
On March 16, 2007, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (San Jose Division) dismissed KinderStart's complaint without leave to amend and partially granted Google's motion for Rule 11 sanctions against KinderStart's attorney, requiring him to pay part of Google's legal expenses.
