Search Engine Optimization: A brief history

I would say there is a good likelihood that you, dear reader, existed in a time before the internet as we know it today. Before an internet of things, before the booms of names like Amazon, Apple, Twitter, or Facebook, before social media and connectivity were at our very fingertips every second of every day.  You lived in a day and age of yellow pages, library cards, phone books, rolodexes, pagers and more.  You knew a time before most modern humans had access to all of recorded history and knowledge at our very fingertips, not to mention all those cute cat videos. Suffice to say, we are all aware of how difficult it once was to acquire such knowledge; the lengths man has gone to study and learn and grow are as innumerable as they are complex.

Here in 2022, I can easily search for whatever I need. Google provides me with answers to every question from recipes to directions to facts. Competitors like Bing offer alternative resources, each engine using its own algorithms to present you with the fastest and most accurate results.  The term SEO started popping up around 1997, though it is believed to have been around as early as 1991 alongside the first websites to exist.  As internet and computer technology advanced, browsers with integrated graphical user interfaces brought more people into the age of the computer. Alongside those browsers often came build in search engines of various types. Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Alta Vista, and others scrapped for digital real estate and clicks for ad revenues, utilizing curated directories to provide results. This all changed with the world in 1998 when Google Search was introduced. Initially brought about to determine the importance of paging architecture on the internet, Google quickly became the most popular search engine in the world, and one of the biggest names in tech in the 21st century so far. 

Quickly, tactics were developed by those in various industries to attempt to boost their names to the top of Google findings, avoid being removed from searches, or being demoted in search results. These tactics turned into algorithms, webmaster guidelines, and regulation by the search engine owners themselves.  Low-quality or thin content results being artificially boosted or inflated were targeted for removal by Google themselves.  The early days of SEO were something of a wild west, with spam and hacking practices prevalent.  Google’s algorithmic approach to search engines began to reward quality and proper content based on query, leading to a revolution in how people found information online. Thus, search engine optimization became a weaponized force for corporate battles, always vying for the best listings to get the most eyes on their product or services.  Out of such conflict, Cyberexpertz.com came to be; with the goal to help our customers achieve the best in search engine result optimization and website design, we hope to propel SEO into the next generation of marketing and information technology.

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