Interactive Google Algorithm Timeline

As the main search engine that people use, Google is hugely powerful. The word ‘Google’ is now in dictionaries as a verb, it is that ubiquitous to daily living. Where previously we used to have to search books to get an answer to something or gain some knowledge about a topic, Google is readily available with an answer to a query.


This interactive timeline from DPFOC in Ireland presents the history of the Google algorithm updates with supporting text, image and video. This was created in advance of the mobile algorithm update that Google released on Tuesday, the 20^th of April, and has been updated to reflect the Mobile-Friendly algorithm.



Online businesses all want to rank top of their relevant search engine results page and as a result we have seen the emergence of the search engine optimization industry which aims to get websites ranking through a series of techniques. Over the years, Google has been steadfast in its efforts to make the Internet a better place for users and so we have seen a number of algorithm updates. Google’s spider software crawls the internet and ranks websites according to what it deems appropriate for specific keywords and phrases and the various algorithm updates have attempted to make the results experience better for the user.

Some algorithm updates were bigger or had more impact than others, but there were others that caused some search engine optimization companies to rethink their whole strategies. Previously they may have been involved in what was then accepted or widely done – the wide scale building of links using black hat methods. Today this kind of behaviour or practice is frowned upon and even penalized by Google. They will penalize a website if they deem it not to be following their guidelines. Google is thought to have over 200 ranking factors which they don’t even confirm so it can still be a guessing game for website owners and SEOs. The search giant only ever emphasizes the importance of making the Internet a better user experience for people and so this is what search marketers try to focus on in order to achieve good rankings.

As a result of this, we have seen a greater focus and investment on the likes of content marketing as companies try to rank and build links by producing content that people will want to link to or share.