In this post we are going to cover major Google algorithms updates timeline, which will show google updates names, date of their launch and Brief description. It is very important to understand google algorithms for webmasters, as their core purpose of publishing informative, precise, presentable articles is to earn money by means of ads and brand building. we have also covered top 5 google algorithms update in our earlier post now look precisely and summarized information of Google algorithms update timeline.
Google Algorithms update timeline:
| Google Update | Date | Brief description |
|---|---|---|
| Google Toolbar | 1-December-2000 | Toolbar PageRank (TBPR) introduced to webmasters |
| Boston | 1-February-2003 | 1st Google update introduces index refreshes (the so-called “Google Dance”) |
| Fritz | 1-July-2003 | End Google Dance and The index was now changing daily |
| Florida | 1-November-2003 | SEO tactics, like keyword stuffing came. |
| Brandy | 1-February-2004 | Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) give importance to Anchor text, help understand synonyms and keyword analysis |
| Nofollow | 1-January-2005 | Nofollow helps spammy comments and impact on link graph |
| Bourbon | 1-May-2005 | Impact on duplicate content and non-www urls. |
| Personalized Search | 1-June-2005 | Personalized search based on search histroy. |
| XML Sitemaps | 1-June-2005 | XML sitemap inplace of HTML sitemaps. |
| Jagger | 1-October-2005 | Low quality links, reciprocal links, link farms and paid links were targeted. |
| Google Local/Maps | 1-October-2005 | Maps & SEO local |
| Big Daddy | 1-December-2005 | URL canonicalization, redirects (301/302) and other technical issues. |
| Universal Search | 1-May-2007 | search results also shows News, Video, Images, Local, and other verticals. 10-listing SERP removed. |
| Dewey | 1-April-2008 | Promotes Google products like Google books. |
| Google Suggest | 1-August-2008 | suggestion while typing search query. |
| Rel-canonical Tag | 1-February-2009 | allowing webmasters to send canonicalization signals to search bots without impacting human visitors. |
| Real-time Search | 1-December-2009 | Search results now also includes twitter feeds, google news, new pages and others |
| Google Places | 1-April-2010 | Helps local bussiness with google maps. |
| May Day | 1-May-2010 | Large scale thin content i.e. low quality websites were hit. |
| Caffeine (Rollout) | 1-June-2010 | Crawling and indexation speed increases |
| Google Instant | 1-September-2010 | displaying search results as a query was being typed |
| Instant Previews | 1- November-2010 | without opening search result a preview of landing pages shown |
| Negative Reviews | 1-December-2010 | Negative review popularity goes down for sites |
| Attribution Update | 28-January-2011 | Stop scrapers and spam cases |
| Panda/Farmer | 23- February-2011 | thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratios were badly hit |
| The +1 Button | 30-March-2011 | Results based on their social circle. |
| Schema.org | 2-June-2011 | structured data with the help of schemas |
| Google+ | 28-June-2011 | entered into social media like facebook with google+ |
| Pagination Elements | 15-September-2011 | Google introduces Next and Previos link. |
| Query Encryption | 18-October-2011 | encrypting search queries impact on organic referral. |
| December 10-Pack | 1-December-2011 | query refinements, parked domain detection, blog search freshness, and image search freshness. |
| Search + Your World | 10-January-2012 | toogle button to turn off personalization based on social circle in SERPs |
| Ads Above The Fold | 19- January-2012 | Devalue sites with too much ad space above the fold. |
| Penguin | 24-April-2012 | Over optimization with keyword stuffing |
| Knowledge Graph | 16-May-2012 | Semantic search, supplemental object about people, places and things. |
| DMCA Penalty (“Pirate”) | 10-August-2012 | Google penalize sites with repeat copyright violations |
| Page Layout #2 | 9-October-2012 | above the fold must be clear and relvent, avoid too much of ads. |
| Domain Crowding | 21-May-2013 | Restrict Domain crowding and improves diversity deep in the Search Results (SERPs) |
| “Payday Loan” Update | 11-June-2013 | Irelevant SERPs more like spammy results of Porn & payday loans |
| In-depth Articles | 6-August-2013 | This is for evergreen and long form content. |
| Hummingbird | 20-August-2013 | Core algorithm update focused on semantic search and knowledge graph. |
| Pigeon | 24-July-2014 | Local SEO hits with this, changes local search results. |
| HTTPS/SSL Update | 6-August-2014 | More focus on security. |
| Pirate 2.0 | 21-October-2014 | To check on software and digital media piracy |
| Mobile Update AKA “Mobilegeddon” | 22-April-2015 | Mobile friendly site boost in ranking |
| RankBrain* | 26-October-2015 | Machine learning became part of Algorithms |
| AdWords Shake-up | 23-February-2016 | Right column ads removed and 4 ads blocks were created. |
| Intrusive Interstitial Penalty | 10- January-2017 | Pop-ups that damage mobile user experience are hit by this update. |
| Google Jobs | 20-June-2017 | Data from job sites in specific portal. |
| Zero-result SERP Test | 14-March-2018 | time/date queries and unit conversion calculators, Google started displaying zero organic results |
| Snippet Length Drop | 13-May-2018 | Snippets lenghts reduced from 300 to 150 characters |
| Video Carousels | 14-June-2018 | Videos in SERPs increased. |
| Mobile Speed Update | 9- July-2018 | Page speed a ranking factor for mobile results. |
| “Medic” Core Update | 1- August-2018 | Sites health and wellness are main factors. |
| Site Diversity Update | 6-June-2019 | Particular sites can now have two or more organic listings in SERPs. |
| BERT Update | 22-October-2019 | Supports BERT natural language processing (NLP) model, able to understand natural laguage and context |
| Featured Snippet De-duping | 22-January-2020 | URLs in snippets will not appear in organic results |
| Passage Indexing (US/English) | 10-February-2021 | Passage indexing started. |