Google was founded in 1998. From its humble beginnings, it’s become the way to find what you need on the Internet. Google hasn’t always been the reliable source of information that it is today, though. It took a lot of time, energy, work, and algorithm updates to get there.
This is a complete list of Google’s known updates that have turned it into the best search engine in the world. This list is a great way to familiarize yourself with Google’s updates. If you want to learn how the algorithm works or other ways to track Google updates, watch the short video below.
Keep reading to explore Google’s algorithm updates!
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All Google Algorithm Updates
June 2, 2021 — June 2021 Core Update
Google announced that its next broad core update would be implemented in June 2021. Danny Sullivan also announced on Twitter that some aspects were not quite ready yet. He explained that the second part of the update will be rolled out in July. Another core Google algorithm update!
April 8, 2021 — Product Review Update
This update was created to better reward high-quality content within reviews, allowing better more informational reviews to rank better with Google.
February 10, 2021 — Passage Indexing (US/English)
In October 2020, Google announced passage indexing and explained it as a new way for Google to rank for passages (rather than just web pages) in search. In February, the updates went live for US Pacific time queries that are in English.
January 13, 2020 — January 2020 Core Update
Google began 2020 with the release of its January 2020 Core Update, which included a new look for desktop search results. Like previous core Google algorithm updates, Google recommended that webmasters follow its usual standards for producing quality content and experiences.
October 25, 2019 — BERT Update
The launch of BERT in 2019 became one of Google’s most significant updates in the past five years. BERT now affects 10% of U.S. English searches and will (hopefully) provide users with more accurate and relevant results.
September 24, 2019 — September 2019 Core Update
In late September, Google launched another core update to its algorithm. Like past core updates, Google advised webmasters to create quality content and experiences for users.
June 6, 2019 — Site Diversity Update
Following its June 2019 Core Update, Google released its Site Diversity Update. This Google search algorithm update focuses on creating diverse search results, meaning most search results won’t feature more than one result from the same website unless deemed relevant.
June 2, 2019 — June 2019 Core Update
At the start of June, Google launched a core update to its search engine algorithm. Like past updates, Google recommended that webmasters review its Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines to learn about creating quality experiences and content for users.
March 12, 2019 — March 2019 Core Update
March also featured a core update. Google did not disclose the changes made to its search engine algorithm. It did provide advice that mimics its current and past guidance for search engine algorithm changes: Follow best practices.
September 27, 2018 — Small Update
Near the end of September, Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, confirmed a smaller Google algorithm update.
August 1, 2018 — Medic Update
A broad core update, this Google SEO update quickly earned the title “Medic Update,” due to its noticeable impact on websites in the health industry. Google, however, stated that this update did not target medical sites intentionally.
April 16, 2018 — Broad Core Update
Google confirmed the release of a broad core update to its algorithm in April but did not provide details on the update itself.
March 9, 2018 — Broad Core Update
March featured the release of an unnamed yet confirmed broad core update. This update, according to Google, focused on benefiting pages that were previously under-rewarded. The company advised all webmasters to continue creating great content.
December 12, 2017 — Small Core Update
Google confirmed several minor improvements to its algorithm in early December.
March 7, 2017 — Fred
This Google algorithm update, called Fred by the SEO community, focused on low-value content. https://twitter.com/methode/status/845282306206007296
January 10, 2017 — Intrusive Interstitials Update
Google updated its algorithm in early January 2017 to target pop-ups and intrusive interstitials that made the user experience on mobile devices terrible. This update coordinated with the company’s increased focus on the mobile user experience.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html
November 10, 2016 — Unnamed Major Update
Google has yet to confirm anything about this major update, but many industry leaders suggest that ranking changes are due to previous update reversals. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-update-22988.html
October 6, 2016 — Penguin 4.0, Phase 2
This phase of Penguin signaled the reversal of all previous Penguin penalties. https://searchenginewatch.com/2016/09/28/penguin-4-0-what-does-it-mean-for-seo-practitioners/
September 27, 2016 — Penguin 4.0, Phase 1
The goal of phase 1 of Penguin was to look at websites as a whole and not punish them for one mistake.
They wanted to look at each specific post to determine how much to devalue the link instead of penalizing the entire site. https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/kyle/blog/google-penguin-4-0-another-content-based-move
September 23, 2016 — Penguin 4.0 announced
The long-awaited Google algorithm update arrived in September, and Google suggested that this update was real-time and a part of the core algorithm. Penguin had a few different phases and the initial rollout took a substantial amount of time.
September 13, 2016 — Image/ Universal Drop
This update brought with it a 50% drop for image results in search engine results pages. It caused a significant ranking shift, and it was likely a part of another larger update. https://moz.com/blog/penguin-4-was-it-worth-the-wait
September 1, 2016 — “Possum”
Google never confirmed this Google search algorithm change, but data suggests that this update, or this update in conjunction with previous updates, heavily impacted organic results.
https://searchengineland.com/everything-need-know-googles-possum-algorithm-update-258900
May 12, 2016 — Mobile-friendly 2
This update was a ranking signal boost that helped mobile-friendly sites. However, the impact was likely fairly small. https://searchengineland.com/googles-mobile-friendly-algorithm-boost-rolled-249357 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-strengthens-mobile-friendly-ranking-signal-today/163760/
May 10, 2016 — Unnamed Major Update
Google never confirmed this update nor was there ever an explanation for it.
However, Google weather trackers showed a 97-degree spike in algorithm activity. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-no-recent-major-algorithm-update-22064.html
February 23, 2016 — AdWords Shake-up
The AdWords shake-up got rid of all right-column ads and replaced them with 4-ad top blocks. It affected click-through rate for paid and organic results.
https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change http://meclosys1.blogspot.com/2016/03/2016-updates-adwords-shake-up-february.html
January 8, 2016 — Unnamed Update
With this update, there was a large change in rankings and Google later confirmed that it was a “core algo update”. There weren’t a lot of details released with this unnamed update. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-core-ranking-21460.html
October 26, 2015 — RankBrain announced
Google first shared information about their machine-learning artificial intelligence system with Bloomberg on this date, although it had been in use for several months prior. It’s one of the signals that plays a role in its algorithm and helps the search engine interpret searches.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-26/google-turning-its-lucrative-web-search-over-to-ai-machines https://searchengineland.com/faq-all-about-the-new-google-rankbrain-algorithm-234440
July 17, 2015 — Panda 4.2 (#28)
Google reported this Panda refresh to Search Engine Land and said that it would affect 2-3% of English language queries. However, the update rolled out very slowly and did not cause any immediate changes in ranking. https://searchengineland.com/google-panda-4-2-is-here-slowly-rolling-out-after-waiting-almost-10-months-225850
May 3, 2015 — The Quality Update
After many webmasters reported large-scale ranking changes, some referred to this update as “Phantom 2.” Google later acknowledged an algorithm change, and said that it impacted “quality signals.” However, they did not provide any specifics on how quality assessment changed.
https://searchengineland.com/the-quality-update-google-confirms-changing-how-quality-is-assessed-resulting-in-rankings-shake-up-221118 https://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/13/ntom-algorithm-update-hits-websites.html
April 21, 2015 — Mobile Update AKA “Mobilegeddon”
In late February, Google announced that they’d be rolling out a mobile-friendliness update on April 21. For the first time, mobile rankings would differ from desktop rankings, with preference being given to sites with a responsive or mobile-friendly design. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2015/02/finding-more-mobile-friendly-search.html https://www.webfx.com/blog/seo/how-important-was-googles-mobile-update/
February 4, 2015 — Unnamed Update
Many webmasters reported major changes in SERPs, but Google did not confirm an update. There is no consensus on what exactly was affected, and guesses range from ecommerce to mobile usability.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-algorithm-update-19820.html
December 22, 2014 — Pigeon Expansion
A few months after its launch in the U.S., Pigeon expanded to the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. https://searchengineland.com/google-pigeon-update-rolls-uk-canada-australia-211576
December 10, 2014 — Penguin Everflux
At this point, Penguin shifted from infrequent, major updates to continuous updates. https://searchengineland.com/google-says-penguin-shift-continuous-updates-210580
October 21, 2014 — Pirate 2.0
Over two years after the original Pirate update, Google launched another update to target piracy.
This update was more severe and caused sites with any violation filed through Google’s DMCA system to drop in rankings dramatically.
October 17, 2014 — Penguin 3.0 (#6)
Over a year after the previous update, Google launched a Penguin refresh. The effects were relatively small, and it is suspected that it was data-only.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-3-impact-roll-19321.html
October 2014 — “In The News” Box
With the new “In The News” box, Google started to broaden their news sources. Unlike the results delivered with Universal Search, this news box incorporated articles from non-traditional sites, instead of only mainstream media sources. https://searchengineland.com/googles-news-listings-beyond-traditional-205213 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-in-the-news-upset-news-publishers-19297.html
September 23, 2014 — Panda 4.1 (#27)
Google announced a significant Panda update and estimated that it would affect 3-5% of queries.
https://searchengineland.com/panda-update-rolling-204313
August 28, 2014 — Authorship Removed
Exactly a month after removing authorship photos, Google announced that they were completely removing authorship from all SERPs. As John Mueller explained, they made this change because authorship wasn’t, “as useful to our users as we’d hoped, and can even distract from… results.” https://searchengineland.com/goodbye-google-authorship-201975
August 6, 2014 — HTTPS/SSL Update
With this update, Google announced that they would start giving preference to secure sites.
They said that adding encryption would give a “lightweight” rankings boost, but that it may increase over time. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2014/08/https-as-ranking-signal.html https://searchengineland.com/google-starts-giving-ranking-boost-secure-httpsssl-sites-199446
July 24, 2014 — Pigeon Update
With this major update to local SEO, Google altered the way they handled location cues. They explained that it was a merge of the local algorithm and core algorithms, designed to provide a “more useful and relevant experience for searchers seeking local results.” https://searchengineland.com/google-makes-significant-changes-local-search-ranking-algorithm-197778
June 28, 2014 — Authorship Photo Drop
Google announced that they were dropping authorship photos from all SERPs.
At this point, authorship was only denoted by a name and much less prominent. https://moz.com/blog/bye-bye-author-pics https://searchengineland.com/google-removes-author-photos-search-mean-195236
June 12, 2014 — Payday Loan 3.0
Less than a month after 2.0, Google launched Payday Loan 3.0. They announced that this updated targeted specific sites, while the previous ones targeted “spammy queries.” https://www.seroundtable.com/google-payday-loan-3-spam-18695.html
May 19, 2014 — Panda 4.0 (#26)
Google confirmed that this update included both an algorithm update and a data refresh, estimating that 7.5% of English queries were affected. https://searchengineland.com/google-begins-rolling-panda-4-0-now-192043 https://moz.com/blog/panda-4-payday-loan-2-and-ebays-very-bad-day
May 16, 2014 — Payday Loan 2.0
Google confirmed that they were changing their Payday Loan algorithm, but it is difficult to determine its effects because it was rolled out in the same time frame as Panda 4.0. http://searchengineland.com/official-google-payday-loan-algorithm-2-0-launched-targets-spammy-queries-192027
March 24, 2014 — Unnamed Update
Many algorithm flux trackers reported shifts around this time, and some referred to it as a “softer Panda,” but nothing was confirmed by Google. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-march-18313.html
February 6, 2014 — Page Layout #3
This was a “refresh” of the Page Layout algorithm, meaning that site owners who removed their ads above the fold had a chance to restore their original rankings. https://searchengineland.com/google-updates-page-layout-algorithm-go-sites-top-heavy-ads-183929
December 19, 2013 — Authorship Shake-up
Authorship (attribution in the SERPs with a name and photo) started to disappear for about 15% of results.
Many site owners initially thought that this was a penalty or an indicator that Google thought their sites were low quality, but it really just foreshadowed the eventual drop of authorship from all results. https://moz.com/blog/googles-december-authorship-shake-up
December 17, 2013 — Unnamed Update
Flux trackers around the world noticed activity, but Google did not confirm an update. https://searchengineland.com/google-denies-a-major-update-on-december-17th-180289
November 14, 2013 — Unnamed Update
Many webmasters received DNS errors in Google Webmaster Tools, and around the same time, flux trackers picked up unusual activity.
https://moz.com/blog/was-there-a-november-14th-google-update https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-nov15-17689.html
October 4, 2013 — Penguin 2.1 (#5)
This was primarily a data update and not a major change to the Penguin algorithm. https://searchengineland.com/penguin-2-1-and-5-live-173632 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-21-big-17479.html
August 20, 2013 — Hummingbird Update
Although this update was not announced until more than a month later, Google rolled it out in late August. It was a core algorithm update that has been compared to Caffeine and affected semantic search and the Knowledge Graph.
https://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-17268.html
August 6, 2013 — In-depth Articles
With this feature, “in-depth articles” began to show in a sidebar for many queries. These articles were ranked based on quality and depth, and according to Google, were intended to help users who wanted to learn about broad topics instead of simply getting an answer to a quick question. https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2013/08/in-depth-articles-in-search-results.html https://moz.com/blog/inside-indepth-articles
July 26, 2013 — Unnamed Update
Webmasters noticed unusual changes in traffic, but Google did not confirm an update.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-weekend-update-17142.html
July 19, 2013 — Knowledge Graph Expansion
Moz refers to this as “the day the Knowledge Graph exploded,” since the amount of queries that showed a Knowledge Graph jumped by more than 50%. https://moz.com/blog/the-day-the-knowledge-graph-exploded
July 18, 2013 — Panda Recovery
Google confirmed this update, but the details were unclear. Many believe that it was algorithmic and “softened” previous Panda penalties.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-update-17094.html
June 27, 2013 — Multi-Week Update
Matt Cutts tweeted that a “multi-week update” was about to occur, but did not include any specifics. Some people speculated that it was a spam-related update, similar to Payday Loan. https://twitter.com/mattcutts/status/348255304825319425 https://moz.com/blog/googles-multi-week-algorithm-update https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-confirmed-16981.html
June 11, 2013 — Panda Updating on a Monthly Basis
Although this was not an update, Matt Cutts clarified that Panda was still updating on a monthly basis.
This was contrary to many webmasters’ expectations of a Panda “everflux” after Panda #25. https://searchengineland.com/googles-panda-dance-matt-cutts-confirms-panda-rolls-out-monthly-over-10-of-30-days-162950 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-24-16255.html https://searchengineland.com/google-panda-update-version-24-1-2-of-search-queries-impacted-146149
June 11, 2013 — “Payday Loan” Update
Matt Cutts announced this update on Twitter by saying that Google had “just started a new ranking update today for some spammy queries.” He later went into more detail at SMX advanced and explained that the algorithm was designed to target notoriously spammy searches, like those for payday loans and pornographic material. https://searchengineland.com/google-pay-day-loan-algorithm-google-search-algorithm-update-to-target-spammy-queries-162941 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-pay-day-loan-spam-algo-16917.html
May 22, 2013 — Penguin 2.0 (#4)
Although many webmasters expected this to be a major update, its impact was only moderate. Google did not provide many details, but it appears to have been more targeted to the page level of sites.
https://searchengineland.com/penguin-4-with-penguin-2-0-generation-spam-fighting-is-now-live-160544 https://moz.com/blog/penguin-2-were-you-jarred-and-or-jolted
May 21, 2013 — Domain Crowding Update
This update was intended to control domain crowding beyond the first page of results and rolled out right around the same time as Penguin 2.0. This meant that dominant domains could no longer take over entire pages of results.
May 9, 2013 — Phantom Update
Many webmasters suspected an algorithm update after experiencing significant traffic loss, but Google made no announcement or confirmation of a change. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-now-16762.html
March 14, 2013 — Panda #25
Matt Cutts announced this update at SMX West and implied that it would be the last update before Panda was integrated into the core algorithm.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-25-16506.html https://searchengineland.com/google-panda-update-25-seems-to-have-hit-151732
January 22, 2013 — Panda #24
Google announced this as the first official update of 2013 and claimed that 1.2% of queries were affected.
December 21, 2012 — Panda #23
According to Google, this was a “refresh” of Panda, and it affected 1.3% of English queries. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-maybe-16121.html
December 4, 2012 — Knowledge Graph Expansion
Google expanded the Knowledge graph to non-English queries, and it now showed up for searches in Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Russian, and Italian.
https://search.googleblog.com/2012/12/get-smarter-answers-from-knowledge_4.html
November 21, 2012 — Panda #22
Not long after the previous Panda update, Google confirmed this data-only update. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-22-confirmed-16017.html https://searchengineland.com/confirmed-google-panda-refresh-22-happened-on-november-21st-141098
November 5, 2012 — Panda #21
This update was relatively small compared to the previous Panda update and affected 1.1% of English queries. http://searchengineland.com/google-releases-panda-update-21-138902 http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-21-15918.html
October 9, 2012 — Pay Layout Update #2
This was a change to the original page layout update, which targeted pages with ads above the fold.
Sites who were initially affected were restored to their original rankings if they made the changes Google suggested, and the algorithm rolled out globally. http://searchengineland.com/google-page-layout-algorithm-update-135847 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-page-layout-update-15815.html
October 5, 2012 — Penguin #3
Contrary to suggestions that this would be a major update, this data update impacted only 0.3% of queries. http://searchengineland.com/google-penguin-update-3-135527 http://www.seroundtable.com/google-penguin-3-15802.html
October 4, 2012 — 65 search quality highlights
This was the last list of search highlights Google released.
It included seven-result SERPs, the Knowledge Graph expansion, updates to page quality, and changes to local results. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/10/search-quality-highlights-65-changes.html
September 27, 2012 — Panda #20
This was a larger Panda update and affected 2.4% of queries. It was also when industry publications stopped referring to Panda updates with their series names, and started simply referring to them with numbers.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-20-15789.html http://www.seroundtable.com/google-emd-panda-15792.html
September 27, 2012 — Exact-Match Domain
The Exact-Match Domain (EMD) update devalued EMDs, which, according to Moz, reduced their presence online by over 10%. This was meant to target sites that used keyword-heavy domain names solely for SEO purposes. https://moz.com/blog/googles-emd-algo-update-early-data http://searchengineland.com/low-quality-exact-match-domains-are-googles-next-target-134889
September 18, 2012 — Panda 3.9.2 (#19)
This update was a data refresh, and ranking flux was not huge.
http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-392-15720.html http://searchengineland.com/panda-update-3-92-rolling-out-or-is-it-panda-4-0-time-133607
August 20, 2012 — Panda 3.9.1 (#18)
This was a relatively small data update. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-391-15606.html http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-refresh-on-august-19th-version-3-9-1-131284
August 14, 2012 — 7-Result SERPs
With this shift, any SERP with expanded sitelinks for the first result would only display seven results on the first page instead of 10. This affected almost all queries that were either brand names or domain matches. https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4485409.htm https://moz.com/blog/serp-crowding-shrinkage-its-not-your-imagination http://searchengineland.com/7-new-10-google-showing-fewer-results-131006
August 10, 2012 — Pirate Update
Google started penalizing sites with repeat copyright violations, like torrent sites. Sites with high numbers of removal notices started appearing lower in results, which Google claimed would “help users find legitimate, quality sources of content more easily.” http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/an-update-to-our-search-algorithms.html http://searchengineland.com/dmca-requests-now-used-in-googles-ranking-algorithm-130118 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/introducing-knowledge-graph-things-not.html http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-knowledge-graph-121585
August 10, 2012 — 86 search quality highlights
This was the largest list of search highlights Google ever published, and it included Panda and algorithm refreshes, preference to secure sites, and changes to site clustering.
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/08/search-quality-highlights-86-changes.html http://searchengineland.com/googles-june-july-updates-130392
July 24, 2012 — Panda 3.9 (#17)
This update caused rankings to fluctuate for about a week, and Google said that about 1% of queries were affected. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-39-official-15480.html
July 19, 2012 — Link Warnings
Following months of link warnings in Webmaster Tools, Google’s Matt Cutts addressed webmasters, saying, “Don’t panic.” He said that most of them could safely ignore the warnings, which was contradictory to the warnings about unnatural links. http://searchengineland.com/insanity-google-sends-new-link-warnings-then-says-you-can-ignore-them-128297 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-links-warnings-15461.html
June 25, 2012 — Panda 3.8 (#16)
This was a data refresh with a small impact.
http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-update-version-3-8-on-june-25th-125945 http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-3-8-15350.html
June 8, 2012 — Panda 3.7 (#15)
Google claimed that this data updated affected less than 1% of queries, but ranking fluctuations showed that the impact was greater than previous Panda updates. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-3-7-15281.html https://moz.com/blog/the-bigfoot-update-aka-dr-pete-goes-crazy
June 7, 2012 — 39 search quality highlights
This post included Penguin updates, link-scheme detection, and changes to Google News. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/06/search-quality-highlights-39-changes.html http://searchengineland.com/googles-may-updates-inorganic-backlinks-page-titles-fresh-results-more-123951
May 25, 2012 — Penguin 1.1 (#2)
This was the first data update after Penguin’s original release and confirmed that much like Panda, Penguin data was processed outside of the main index.
http://searchengineland.com/google-pushes-first-penguin-algorithm-update-122518
May 16, 2012 — Knowledge Graph
Google introduced the “Knowledge Graph,” which added supplemental information to certain queries. For example, SERPs for celebrities and well-known people now included a sidebar with an excerpt from their Wikipedia page.
May 4, 2012 — 53 search quality highlights
Many of the changes in this update were related to Penguin, and it also highlighted a 15% larger index, improvements to pagination, and updates to sitelinks.
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/05/search-quality-highlights-53-changes.html http://searchengineland.com/googles-april-search-updates-120370
April 27, 2012 — Panda 3.6 (#14)
This data update’s impact was relatively small. http://searchengineland.com/panda-update-3-6-on-april-27th-120227
April 24, 2012 — Penguin Announced
Originally referred to as the “Webspam Update,” Penguin targeted a number of spam factors and impacted 3.1% of English queries. It was designed to target sites that used black hat SEO techniques and help searchers find sites that provided a great user experience.
They did not provide many details about specific signals (as black hat SEOs likely would’ve used them to game the search results), but instead told webmasters to “focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience … instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics.” http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html http://searchengineland.com/the-penguin-update-googles-webspam-algorithm-gets-official-name-119623 http://searchengineland.com/penguin-update-recovery-tips-advice-119650 http://searchengineland.com/google-talks-penguin-update-recover-negative-seo-120463
April 19, 2012 — Panda 3.5 (#13)
Only four days after the previous Panda update, Google released another mix of changes. They did not specify what changed. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-35-15065.html
April 16, 2012 — Parked Domain Bug
A data error caused some sites to be mistaken for parked domains, which temporarily affected rankings.
Google confirmed the error, and reported that it was not an intentional algorithm change. http://searchengineland.com/dropped-in-rankings-google-mistake-over-parked-domains-118979 https://www.seroundtable.com/google-update-april-2012-15023.html
April 3, 2012 — 50 search quality highlights
This update confirmed Panda 3.4 and also included changes to anchor text, image search, and local intent. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/04/search-quality-highlights-50-changes.html http://searchengineland.com/googles-march-updates-anchor-text-image-search-navigational-search-more-117285
March 23, 2012 — Panda 3.4 (#12)
Google announced this update via Twitter right as it was rolling out.
They estimated that the update impacted 1.6% of queries. http://searchengineland.com/google-says-panda-update-is-rolling-out-now-116444
March 12, 2012 — Search Quality Video
Google published uncut footage of a December 2011 meeting on their official blog. The video showed Google employees at their weekly “Quality Launch Review” discussing proposed algorithm changes, and provided more insight into how decisions were made.
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/03/video-search-quality-meeting-uncut.html
February 27, 2012 — Panda 3.3 (#11)
This update was just over a year after Panda’s original launch, and appeared to be relatively minor. http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-panda-update-link-evaluation-local-search-rankings-113078 http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-33-14803.html
February 27, 2012 — Venice Update
This update provided localized results based on the geographic location of each user. As a result, rankings were different for different users, location-based keywords became much more important.
https://moz.com/blog/understand-and-rock-the-google-venice-update
February 27, 2012 — 40 search quality highlights
Only a few weeks after the previous post (contrary to their announcement of monthly posts), Google published a second February post — this time with 40 updates. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/search-quality-highlights-40-changes.html
February 3, 2012 — 17 search quality highlights
Shortly after announcing Search+, Google released this post of updates. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/02/17-search-quality-highlights-january.html http://searchengineland.com/googles-january-search-update-110121
January 19, 2012 — Page Layout (“Top Heavy”) Update
This update devalued sites with too many ads “above the fold” and targeted sites that used huge, distracting banner ads.
http://searchengineland.com/too-many-ads-above-the-fold-now-penalized-by-googles-page-layout-algo-108613 http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html
January 18, 2012 — Panda 3.2 (#10)
Google confirmed a Panda update, but said that the algorithm itself remained unchanged. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-32-update-14632.html http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-3-2-update-confirmed-109321
January 10, 2012 — Search + Your World
With Search+, Google started aggressively pushing Google+ social data and user profiles into search results. They explained that they were now a search engine “that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.” For users who did not want Google+ data included in search results, they also added a button to shut off personalization.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/search-plus-your-world.html http://searchengineland.com/examples-google-search-plus-drive-facebook-twitter-crazy-107554
January 5, 2012 — 30 search quality highlights
This time, Google announced 30 changes instead of 10, which they referred to as “search quality highlights.” http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/30-search-quality-highlights-with.html http://searchengineland.com/google-announces-megasitelinks-image-search-improvements-better-byline-dates-106798
December 2011 — New monthly series announced
For the second time, Google released a blog post with recent algorithm updates. They also announced that these posts would be published on a monthly basis. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/12/search-quality-highlights-new-monthly.html http://searchengineland.com/google-parked-domains-scraper-sites-targeted-amongsearch-changes-103302
November 18, 2011 — Panda 3.1 (#9)
Although Matt Cutts announced the previous month that Panda was entering a period of flux, some industry sources called this minor update 3.1. http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-31-14348.html
November 14, 2011 — 10 algorithm changes
In an unprecedented move, Matt Cutts published a post with the details of 10 recent algorithm changes. Most of them were relatively small, but the post showed a shift towards transparency. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/11/ten-recent-algorithm-changes.html http://searchengineland.com/improved-snippets-rank-boost-for-official-pages-among-10-new-google-algorithm-changes-100969
November 3, 2011 — Freshness Update
Google announced that the “freshness” of pages would impact their rankings for certain queries.
This mostly affected time-sensitive results, but it was the first time Google gave preference to recent content. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/giving-you-fresher-more-recent-search.html http://searchengineland.com/google-search-algorithm-change-for-freshness-to-impact-35-of-searches-99856
October 18, 2011 — Query Encryption
Google announced that they would start encrypting search queries for privacy reasons. They said that the shift had to do with “the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results” they delivered, and that the search experience would be different for signed in users.
This encryption signaled the start of “(not provided)” for organic keyword referral data, which made SEO much more difficult. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-secure.html https://moz.com/blog/google-hides-search-referral-data-with-new-ssl-implementation-emergency-whiteboard-friday
October 5, 2011 — Panda “Flux” (#8)
After Matt Cutts tweeted that there would be “Panda-related flux,” a few minor updates occurred. From this point on, there were small, frequent updates to Panda.
http://searchengineland.com/taking-a-closer-look-at-the-googles-panda-2-5-flux-97603 http://searchengineland.com/minor-google-panda-update-on-november-18th-101891
September 28, 2011 — Panda 2.5 (#7)
There are few specific details, but Google confirmed an update and some webmasters reported large losses in traffic. http://searchengineland.com/confirmed-google-panda-2-4-update-arrived-this-week-95222 http://searchengineland.com/google-panda-losers-today-show-winners-youtube-95257
September 21, 2011 — 516 Algorithm Updates
Nothing actually changed on this particular date, but Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed to Congress that Google made 516 algorithm updates in 2010. Even more impressively, they tested more than 13,000 in the same time period. http://searchengineland.com/figz/wp-content/seloads/2011/09/Eric-Schmidt-Testimony.pdf
September 15, 2011 — Pagination Elements
Google introduced rel=”next” and rel=”prev” in order to help fix crawl and duplication problems created by pagination. These tags indicated the relationships between component URLs in paginated series, and allowed Google to send users to the most relevant page.
Google also announced that this improved consolidation for “view all” pages. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/09/pagination-with-relnext-and-relprev.html http://searchengineland.com/google-provides-new-options-for-paginated-content-92906
August 16, 2011 — Expanded Sitelinks
With the introduction of expanded sitelinks, links to as many as 12 internal pages within a site now showed up below the main search result. This was a shift from the original sitelink feature, which was just a single row of four links.
Google also explained that their algorithm could help predict which sections of the site users wanted and adjust sitelinks accordingly. http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/08/evolution-of-sitelinks-expanded-and.html http://searchengineland.com/official-google-sitelinks-expands-to-12-pack-89555
August 12, 2011 — Panda 2.4 (#6)
Six months after its original launch, Google rolled Panda out internationally. It now affected English and non-English queries (with the exception of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean), and impacted 6-9% of all searches.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/08/high-quality-sites-algorithm-launched.html http://searchengineland.com/googles-panda-update-launches-internationally-in-most-languages-89214
July 23, 2011 — Panda 2.3 (#5)
It is unclear whether this was an algorithm update or a refresh to Panda data, but many webmasters believed that there was a major Panda update. http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-2-3-update-is-live-87230
June 28, 2011 — Google+ Launched
The search engine officially launched a social platform, which revolved around organizing friends into circles and sharing content. Within 2 weeks, Google+ had 10 million registered users.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-google-project-real-life.html http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/14/larry-page-on-google-over-10-million-users-1-billion-items-shared/
June 21, 2011 — Panda 2.2 (#4)
Google officially confirmed an update to Panda-impacted sites and data. They also confirmed that the updates occurred separately from the main index (and not in real time). http://searchengineland.com/official-google-panda-update-2-2-is-live-82611 http://searchengineland.com/why-google-panda-is-more-a-ranking-factor-than-algorithm-update-82564
June 2, 2011 — Schema.org
Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announced an alliance called schema.org, which was intended to help all three provide richer search results.
The alliance provided a “common foundation of support for a set of microdata types,” which helped give semantic meaning to site content. http://searchengineland.com/schema-org-google-bing-yahoo-unite-79554
May 9, 2011 — Panda 2.1 (#3)
Although they did not provide details, Google rolled out a set of relatively minor changes to Panda. http://searchengineland.com/its-panda-update-2-not-3-google-says-76508 http://www.seroundtable.com/google-panda-3-13379.html
April 11, 2011 — Panda 2.0 (#2)
Google officially rolled out the Panda update to all English queries worldwide and also integrated new signals, including data about sites users blocked.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html http://searchengineland.com/google-rolls-out-its-panda-update-internationally-and-begins-incorporating-searcher-blocking-data-72497
March 30, 2011 — The +1 Button
With the +1 button, users could “vote” for pages that they liked and influence the search results within their social circles. Many people considered this Google’s response to the Facebook “like” button. http://searchengineland.com/meet-1-googles-answer-to-the-facebook-like-button-70569
February 23, 2011 — Panda
In this major update, Google cracked down on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratios, and other quality issues.
It affected almost 12% of all search results and caused dramatic losses for some companies. However, it also caused companies with high quality content to move up in rankings. Panda showed a big shift towards quality content, and it was only the first part of a long series of Panda updates.
http://www.wired.com/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/ https://moz.com/blog/googles-farmer-update-analysis-of-winners-vs-losers
January 28, 2011 — Attribution Update
This update was made in an attempt to better sort out content attribution and stop scrapers. Matt Cutts explained that as a result, searchers were more likely to see sites that published original content than sites that scraped or copied content. https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/algorithm-change-launched/
December 2010 — Negative Reviews
After ecommerce site DecorMyEyes was caught intentionally treating customers poorly for the sake of getting negative reviews, Google adjusted their algorithm to target sites who were ranking well based on bad publicity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/business/28borker.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-bad-to-your-customers-is-bad-for.html
December 2010 — Social Signals
Although not technically an algorithm change, Google and Bing both confirmed that they used social signals (like data from Facebook and Twitter) in determining ranking. http://searchengineland.com/what-social-signals-do-google-bing-really-count-55389 http://searchengineland.com/google-webmaster-video-reconfirms-use-of-social-signals-59320
November 2010 — Instant Previews
added a magnifying glass icon next to search results that showed a preview of the landing page when you placed your cursor on a result. This allowed users to compare results and determine relevancy without even leaving the SERPs.
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/beyond-instant-results-instant-previews.html
September 2010 — Google Instant
With Google Instant, search results were displayed and changed as users typed their queries. These predictions made search even faster than before, but the feature’s impact on SEO was minimal. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/search-now-faster-than-speed-of-type.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-instant-behind-scenes.html https://moz.com/blog/google-instant-fewer-changes-to-seo-than-the-average-algo-update
August 2010 — Brand Update
Google started allowing the same domain to appear multiple times on results pages, instead of limiting them to 1-2 listings.
http://searchengineland.com/google-search-results-dominated-by-one-domain-49025
June 2010 — Caffeine
Almost a year after the preview, Google officially completed the Caffeine infrastructure. This boosted their speed, integrated crawling and indexation, and resulted in a fresher index, according to Google. http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html http://searchengineland.com/googles-new-indexing-infrastructure-caffeine-now-live-43891
May 2010 — May Day
This algorithm change impacted long-tail traffic, and Matt Cutts explained that it was designed to cause “higher quality sites to surface for long-tail queries.” Sites with lots of thin content were hit especially hard, as were large sites with “item” pages that didn’t have many individual links pointing to them.
http://searchengineland.com/google-confirms-mayday-update-impacts-long-tail-traffic-43054 https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/022293.html https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4125460.htm
April 2010 — Google Places
With the launch of Google Places, “Places” pages were no longer only a part of Google Maps. Instead, they were integrated with local search results, and included new local advertising options. http://searchengineland.com/google-local-business-center-becomes-google-places-40307 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/introducing-google-places.html
December 2009 — Real-time Search
With real-time search, results pages automatically updated with new information including tweets, Google news articles, and new pages.
This only affected queries with a “real-time component,” and users could stop the refreshes with a pause button. http://searchengineland.com/google-launches-real-time-search-31355
August 2009 — Caffeine preview
This was just a preview of the major changes to take place in 2010, which were intended to improve the speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness of Google search. Beta testers were extremely impressed with how much the new infrastructure impacted speed.
http://mashable.com/2009/08/10/google-caffeine/ http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/help-test-some-next-generation.html
February 2009 — Vince
This update focused on promoting authority and trust and gave preference in SERPs to big brands. This meant that even though many large companies did not practice SEO, they outranked those who did. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2064606/Hand-Edits-or-Vince-at-Work-in-Google-Search-Results
February 2009 — Rel=canonical Tag
In a joint announcement, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo introduced the “rel=canonical” tag, which allowed webmasters to canonicalize URLs without affecting site visitors.
This meant that site owners could organize content that was accessible from multiple URLs and indicate to search engines which one they preferred, which helped eliminate concerns about duplicate content. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/139066?rd=1 https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/canonical-link-tag/ https://moz.com/blog/canonical-url-tag-the-most-important-advancement-in-seo-practices-since-sitemaps
August 2008 — Google Suggest
This is when Google first started offering suggested searches as visitors began typing in the search box. The feature was launched after four years of development, and provided suggestions based on an aggregate of searches.
http://searchengineland.com/googlecom-finally-gets-google-suggest-feature-14626
April 2008 — Dewey
The specifics of this update were unclear, but some suspected that Google was pushing its own internal properties like Google Books. https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016754.html https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3615693.htm
June 2007 — Buffy
This update was described as “an accumulation of smaller changes,” and was named in honor of Vanessa Fox leaving Google. https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/013882.html https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/smx-seattle-wrap-up/
May 2007 — Universal Search
With this update, Google started integrating News, Video, Images, Local, and other verticals into the traditional search results.
This was the end of the original 10-listing SERP for many queries. http://searchengineland.com/google-20-google-universal-search-11232
December 2006 — False Alarm
Webmasters reported major ranking changes in November, which many attributed to a large update, but Google claims that there were no changes.
November 2006 – Supplemental Update
At this point, the supplemental index was still being used, and this update changed how the pages in it were presented.
Despite claims that having pages in the supplemental index was a penalty, Google said otherwise. https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/006740.html
December 2005 — “Big Daddy”
This update was actually named by Matt Cutts, not WMW. It changed the way that Google handled URL canonicalization, redirects, and other technical issues.
https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/indexing-timeline/ https://moz.com/blog/todd-greg-matt-cutts-on-webmasterradio
October 2005 — Google Local/Maps
Following its launch of the Local Business Center in March, Google officially merged its Local and Maps data. This meant that finding information and detailed directions to local businesses was now a seamless process. http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2005/10/google-merges-local-and-maps-products_06.html
October 2005 — Jagger
This was actually a series of updates that rolled out in three stages.
It targeted low-quality links, including reciprocal links, link farms, and paid links. https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002711.html https://www.webmasterworld.com/forum30/32004.htm
September 2005 — Gilligan
Many refer to this as the “false” update since webmasters saw changes but Google claimed that no update occurred. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2061165/Googles-Cutts-Says-Not-An-Update-I-Say-An-Update-Just-Not-A-Dance
June 2005 — Personalized search
For the first time, Google started utilizing users’ search histories to provide personalized results.
They explained that they would “refine your results based on your searching habits,” which was alarming to some users. http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2061728/Google-Relaunches-Personal-Search-This-Time-It-Really-Is-Personal http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/search-gets-personal.html
June 2005 — XML Sitemaps
This is when Google first allowed webmasters to submit XML sitemaps, which bypassed traditional HTML sitemaps and gave SEOs control over how their sites were crawled and indexed. Google said that this new system would help it better gather pages, and that site owners could indicate how often their pages changed and should be revisited.
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2061916/New-Google-Sitemaps-Web-Page-Feed-Program https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whats-an-update/
May 2005 — Bourbon
WMW regular “GoogleGuy” (believed to be Matt Cutts) announced that this update involved “3.5 changes in search quality,” but did not say exactly what they were. Many believe that it targeted content scrapers and rogue link wheels, as well as how duplicate content was treated. http://battellemedia.com/archives/2005/06/google_update_bourbon.php https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002130.html
February 2005 — Allegra
The effects of this update were unclear, but some speculated that it affected the Google “sandbox.” Others believed that it had to do with LSI or suspicious links.
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2047678/Googles-Feb.-2005-Update
January 2005 — Nofollow
For the first time, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft introduced the “nofollow” attribute, which denoted that a site couldn’t vouch for the quality or appropriateness of the linked site. This attribute was intended to help clean up link spam and control outbound link quality. http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2062985/google-yahoo-msn-unite-on-support-for-nofollow-attribute-for-links
August 2004 — Google IPO
On August 19, 2004, Google announced that it would go public for $85/share.
They sold 19 million shares, raised $1.67 billion in capital, and set their market value at over $20 billion. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/BUSINESS/08/19/google.ipo/
February 2004 — Brandy
This update was comprised of a few different changes, including a large index expansion and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), meaning that the search engine now understood synonyms. The update also led to more attention to anchor text relevance, and the concept of “link neighborhoods.” http://www.webpronews.com/googles-brandy-update-exposed-2004-02 http://www.sitepoint.com/brandy-google-update/
January 2004 — Austin
This updated tackled deceptive on-page tactics like invisible text and meta tag stuffing.
Some webmasters also believe that this is the first algorithm to take page relevance into account. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-latest-on-update-austin-googles-january-update/237/ http://www.search-marketing.info/newsletter/articles/austin-florida.htm
November 2003 — Florida
This was a major algorithm update and caused an unprecedented outcry from affected site owners as many fell in rankings. They felt that the search engine was damaging their businesses, and some speculated that Google was purposely trying to boost ad sales.
Others speculated that the update was filtering out sites through a Google SEO update that exceeded an “allowable” threshold of SEO. This is closer to the truth, as the algorithm was intended to crack down on tactics like keyword stuffing. http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2066309/what-happened-to-my-site-on-google http://www.webworkshop.net/florida-update.html
September 2003 – Supplemental Index
Google was quickly growing and had to temporarily move some pages into a “supplemental index.” Webmasters were unhappy with the change, but the supplemental pages were ultimately brought back to the main index.
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2067049/search-engine-size-wars-googles-supplemental-results
July 2003 — Fritz
This was the official end of the monthly “Google Dance.” Google started taking an incremental approach to updates, and the index started changing on a daily basis. https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/explaining-algorithm-updates-and-data-refreshes/
June 2003 — Esmeralda
This was the last regular monthly update. It replaced “Google Dance” with “Everflux” and signaled the start of a more continuous update process.
May 2003 — Dominic
This algorithm update changed the way that backlinks were weighed so that links from news articles and reputable sites were worth more than those from disreputable sites. https://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/13088-1-30.htm
April 2003 — Cassandra
This update was designed to address link-quality issues like linking from co-owned domains. Many WMW users also speculated that it placed more weight on older sites.
https://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/11622.htm
February 2003 — Boston
This was the first announced update, and the first to receive an official name from WebmasterWorld members, which comes from the fact that it was announced at SES Boston. It was a combination of algorithm changes and major index refreshes known at the “Google Dance.” At this point, Google aimed for one major monthly update.
September 2002 — First documented update
For the first time, webmasters noticed sudden changes in their rankings. There are few clear details, but it confused many SEOs and set the stage for future algorithm changes to come.
https://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/5688.htm
December 2000 — Google Toolbar
Google’s free browser plugin meant that for the first time, Internet users could perform searches without going to the website of a search engine. This made searching easier than ever before, and also introduced Toolbar PageRank, or as it became known to SEOs, TBPR. http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/12/google-launches-google-toolbar.html
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