5 replies to this topic

[222fbj]

Does anyone know where I could get info, or a summary of signficant (for SEO/ranking results) changes to the Google Search Algorithm?

I'm new to the SEO world and trying to get a general understanding of how the algorithm has evolved over the past few years. Or, has it been a lot of continual, minor changes? - making it difficult to identify 'significant' changes/dates?

thanks

[phaithful]

I'm unaware of a central place that keeps a complete timeline of all the Google updates and algorithmic changes. But I could be mistaken... I've seen threads on forums in the past trying to document such things, but never anything that really impressed upon me to bookmark it.

In any case, I think the reason it's hard to document things like that is because the algorithm is kept a secret and there are a lot of "updates" vs "data refreshes" that seem to effect sites in different ways. Not to mention that there are lot of people claiming there is an update taking place, but nothing is ever verified... and almost never by a Googler.

I'd say if you want to learn the history of a search algorithm, one place to start is doing a "keyword" site: search on searchenginewatch.com, seobythesea.com (for patent info), blog.outer-court.com, searchenginland.com (for more recent stuff).

[Jozian]

Well, since Google only hints at most of the changes, this might be hard to find and even harder to validate

But, it IS an excellent idea. If some of the experts here at Cr8 and out there in the SEO world could organize their assumptions into a timeline format, that would be very valuable, to me at least. In fact, I would probaby pay for something like that...

-Jeff

[phaithful]

Just thinking aloud, but would having a timeline of dates on when changes occur really help ones SEO efforts?

I've been doing SEO for a while, probably not as long as others, but for the most part I focus in on what works now and what changes might occur in the future. I rarely think about what has happened in the past and when they happened.

That's probably short-sided of me, but long gone are the days of meta data stuffing... do I really need to know when they updated their algo so that wouldn't work anymore?

[Jozian]

Good points, phaith.

I was envisioning something more that a simple timeline I guess. Like what changed, why, and what was the impact? Seeing the past helps me extrapolate the future. And since I am visually oriented, I guess I already visualize information over time in the form of a graphic 'timeline'.

Understanding the recent devaluing of some paid linkbacks (or even the old metatags) might save my butt in the future

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - Santayana

-Jeff

[222fbj]

Thanks for the replies to my question - and I'm happy to hear it was a good question. Although I'm a beginner with SEO - I realize the dates and change info would be sort of fuzzy. But even so it would be helpful to put something out - perhaps just to get comments from others.

I know there are always more 'good ideas' than time to do them..but seems like a page dedicated to this...and updated as people add info/comments - would be a valuable addition to this site/forum.

If it would help - I would be happy to create the page from whatever bits of info were available....not much of a contribution but about all I can offer at this point. - Barrett