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Larry Page and Sergey Brin introduce PageRank, a Web document citation ranking methodology based on link relationships.
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Image Search launches, offering access to 250 million images.
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Google launches Google News, which uses the Hilltop algorithm devised by Krishna Bharat and George A. Mih?il?.
Google Newshttp://www.alternet.org/story/14239/ -
Froogle Launches (later becomes Google Product Search)
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Bloggers coin the expression “Google bombing” and launch the widespread practice of pointing collaborative links at otherwise irrelevant documents to manipulate query results.
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Google introduces the Supplemental Results Index, a repository for documents Google doesn’t quite know what to do with. Many of these documents are duplicate content pages.
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Google launches the infamous “Florida” update. Many SEOs wrongly conclude that Google has suddenly adopted the Hilltop algorithm.
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Google adjusts its algorithm to look at links in a new way. An apparent unintended side effect is the so-called “Google Sandbox Effect”, whereby sites with few to no trusted links cannot rank even for their own names.
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Google begins updating its index on a weekly basis (until now it had been updating monthly).
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Google dumps millions of documents from its index, resulting in many queries that are flooded with so-called “URL-only” results, although many older sites simply vanish altogether or show 2-year-old data. The search results return to normal around May.
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Google begins de-indexing and/or ignoring links from faux directories and and some Web sites that share certain design features of faux directories.
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Google de-indexes more faux directories in volume.
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Google begins rolling out the Bigdaddy update. Bigdaddy introduces a new infrastructure, a dual-index crawl, and re-engineers the Supplemental Index to absorb many low-PageRank documents.
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Matt Cutts writes on his blog that PageRank is being used to determine the index to which documents are assigned.
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Search Engine Roundtable reports that Supplemental Index pages are not fully indexed (this is later confirmed by Google).
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An internal Federal Trade Commission letter discussing paid endorsements is leaked to the news media.
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Matt Cutts suggests that paid links should be disclosed, implying that they may fall under the FTC paid endorsement policy.
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Google follows in the footsteps of A9 and Ask by unveiling the Searchology Update, introducing “Google 3.0″, which emphasizes Universal Search (injecting results from News, Blog, Books, and other search indexes into Main Web search results).
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Matt Cutts introduces the concept of “Peanut Butter SEO” at the first SMX Advanced conference in Seattle, explaining that “each site gets only so much PageRank” and it can only be spread so far like peanut butter on bread.
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Dan Thies proposes using “rel=’nofollow’” on some internal pages such as shopping cart pages etc.
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Google says it is no longer useful to include the “Supplemental Result” label in search results.
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Dan Thies revises his internal nofollow position to favor the use of nofollow on more internal pages. The “PageRank sculpting” controversy goes into overdrive from this point on as the SEO community divides.
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Google declares war on paid links.
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Google’s Supplemental Index still alive and still preventing legitimate content from ranking above less relevant results in the Main Web Index.
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