Google Update History 2000 - 2016

Yearly Google updates its search algorithm multiple times. Most of the updates are so small that only a few notices the changes because they are looking for them, and do not affect the majority of the online community.

Frequently Google will roll out a major algorithm update, that affects how your site will rank in their search engine in such way webmasters and developers all over the world will have to follow the flow of these changes.

Google Update Timeline

2000

On this year Google rolled out their major update. They introduce the Google Toolbar with Toolbar Page Rank, which introduce the concept of page rank, which revolutionize the idea of webmasters in regards of high ranking.

2002

On September of 2002, Google releases an unnamed update. The reason behind this update still remains unclear. However, the areas around this update revolved within PageRank and Google Dance Update.

2003

On 2003 Google releases numerous updates.

·        Boston – This is the first named update by Google, rolled out in February 2003. This update revolved around the index and algorithm changes.

·        Cassandra – The update came about in April 2003, targeting mainly, the hidden links, and linking from co-owned domains.

·        Dominic – This update was introduced in May 2003, and its working was also mysterious. The update seemed to hit the reporting of backlinks.

·        Esmerelda – It was the last of monthly updates rolled in June 2003. This update was mainly concerned with some infrastructural changes at Google.

·        Fritz – With Fritz update, the Google monthly dance ended, and now the index changed on daily basis.

·        Supplemental Index – To cater more documents in indexing, without compromising on performance, Google introduced the Supplemental Index update in September 2003.

·        Florida – This update truly put the SEO industry in front, by rejecting the old keywords based tactics. The update was introduced in November 2003.

2004

During the mid-year of 2004, Google releases two major updates that make a big impact on webmasters and developers.

·        Austin – Austin update in January 2004 covered the loopholes left by Florida update. These update targeted, deceptive META-tag stuffing, and on-page tactics.

·        Brandy – This update, introduced in February 2004, dealt with index expansion, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) and anchor text relevance.

2005

On 2005 Google release another numerous updates that rectify the previous updates.

·        Nofollow – This update strictly emphasized on the quality of links, by controlling the spam links. This update was implemented in collaboration with other search engines in January 2005.

·        Allegra – This update was introduced in February 2005 and its implication remains ambiguous. Some believe it affected LSI, while others believed it affected the sandbox.

·        Bourbon – According to speculations made by webmasters, this update dealt with non-canonical URLs, and duplicate content. The update surfaced in May 2005.

·        XML Sitemaps – This update superseded the traditional HTML maps, and gave SEO services professionals some control over indexing and crawling in June 2005.

·        Personalized Search – Though with small affect, this update gave search engines ability to adjust results according to the search history of user. It was the second update in June of the same year.

·        Gilligan – In September 2005, Webmasters witnessed changes in search, however Google denied it of being any kind of algorithm update.

·        Google Maps – In October 2005, this update changed the SEO world, when Google inculcated data of Maps into LBC.

·        Jagger – The second update of October that dealt with reciprocal links, low-quality links, and link farms.

·        Big Daddy – The update was released in December 2005, and dealt with URL canonicalization, redirects, and Indexing timeline.

2006

There are no major updates during this year, only minor changes on algorithm.

2007

This year Google release a collection of small updates called “Buffy Update” that have an impact on single word search results, as well as various factors.

Google also introduced the “Universal Search” that makes searches universal by combining result from Google’s Web, blog, news, video, image, local and book searches.

2008

During this year Google introduces their new update.

·        Google Suggest – This update introduces the “Suggest Feature”. As you begin to enter your query, Google now attempts to auto-complete your suggested query by suggesting related terms.

·        Dewey Update – The Dewey update make a big fuss on SEO and marketing scene, yet the specifications were unclear. There are some big changes in Google search results, but no more than that.

2009

On 2009 Google gives a preview of their next-generation infrastructure and invites people to help test it. To help them with improvements they instruct to include the word "caffeine" in the feedback form.

Also during this year also introduces their “Vince Changes”. Vince changes focus on trust, authority and reputation to provide higher quality results which could push big brands further to the top of the SERPs.

2010

On this year Google releases multiple updates.

·        Google Updates – Google Instant launched making the entry of search faster by automatically suggesting options for completion of a search term. Google reports that 15 different technologies were utilized to make this functionality possible.

·        Caffeine Update – Caffeine is Google's new web indexing system that is expected to provide 50% fresher content in searches than their previous index and create the largest collection of web content Google has ever offered.

·        Mayday Update – Mayday included a number of updates toward the end of April that looks for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries.

·        Google Place – The introduction of Google Places created a better way for people to search and find local businesses. This update turned Google Local Business Center to Places.

2011

Panda was introduced in 2011, which is designed to encourage sites to have their content as high quality as possible. This algorithm ensures that you cannot reach a high ranking on Google with poor quality content on your site. As of this year, Panda is now a part of Google’s core ranking algorithm, and this most recent update was named Panda 4.2.

2012

In 2012, Penguin was released with the intention of catching those sites that are spamming SERPs and buying links or obtaining them in non-organic ways. If your site is under a Penguin penalty, you may use the Google Disavow Links tool to tell Google that you do not want your site to be associated with links from certain sites.

2013

Google introduced Hummingbird in August 2013. This is used as Google’s way of coming back with answers when asked questions. Hummingbird enables Google to answer questions as though it was being asked.

2014

On 2014 there are numerous update releases and major algorithm changes. Here are the major updates of Google in the year 2014.

·        Pirate – It introduces a search filter designed to avoid sites that have a numerous copyright infringement reports from ranking well in Google's listings. It was first introduced in August 2012.

·        Penguin – A search filter created for better catch sites deemed to be spamming its search results, those doing so by either buying links or obtaining them through link networks that are designed primarily to boost Google rankings.

·        Panda – A search filter meant to stop sites with poor quality content from working their way into Google's top search results.

·        Pigeon – his is a major local search algorithm update. It provides useful, relevant, and accurate local search results.

·        Payday Loan – The search filter that targets spam queries are frequently associated with spam.

2015

Mobilegeddon was a massive update in 2015 meaning Google. Everyone can test if a site works on mobile with Google’s mobile friendly test, which also tells you what kind of issues are found and how to fix them.

2016

There are some updates this year, AdWords Shake Up and Mobile Friendly 2. AdWords Shake Up was a big deal in the marketing world while Mobile Friendly 2 was intended to implement sites having mobile friendly pages.