Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization was developed by commercial Web designers and promoters in the mid-1990s to help adult and other commercial Web properties achieve prominent placement in the then popular search engines such as Infoseek, Altavista, Hotbot, and Northern Light (to name just a few of the several dozen once popular, active search engines). The original methodologies rarely consisted of little more than repeating a few important words on a page, inserting a keywords meta tag into pages, or stuffing pages with commented text that the search engines mistook for important content.

As the search engines became more sophisticated, they began ignoring certain abused sections and features of pages and looking more at page structures such as title elements, HTML formatting code like <b>, <H1>, etc. As they built up their resources, the search engines relied less and less upon individual page submissions by Webmasters and more on their own "crawling" of the Web through robots, special programs that followed hyperlinks embedded in Web pages.

The Inktomi search engine, which powered many of the most popular search engines, revolutionized search indexing by limiting the influence of page submission and by taking into consieration how many links pointed at pages. Inktomi also maintained two separate indexes. Queries were only resulved against the smaller, "main" index, where pages with the most inbound links were stored. Search engine optimizers began developing methods of inflating linkage for their sites to help them stay in the main index.

Just as Inktomi and Altavista began fighting off the SEO community's efforts to control their indexes with new technologies, Google was launched. Relying on a modified link valuation algorithm to weight its search results, Google immediately won many accolades for achieving high relevance. Google's founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin even claimed they had outsmarted search engine optimizers and promised that their index could not be influenced.

In fact, the Google index was even easier to manipulate than Inktomi and Altavista's index. As search optimizers became aware of Google's online presence, they submitted their link networks to Google for crawling. Google subsequently began rewarding low quality pages with high rankings for many queries. Google was forced to respond to the manipulation by adjusting its algorithm and applying filters to the Web data it collected.

None of the original search engines still rely on their original technologies. Through buyouts and closures, all the old search engines have either vanished or folded into larger search properties. Search is now dominated by Ask, Google, Windows Live, and Yahoo!. America Online still operates a separate search service that utilizes the Google database. Yahoo! originally began as a human-edited directory. After switching between search engines for backup data through the years, Yahoo! finally bought Inktomi and designed a new search engine.

All of the search engines today employ link valuation methodologies similar in concept to Google's original PageRank algorithm, but they have added levels of complexity such as "web community" analysis, trust filtering, and other methodologies to help improve the quality of their search results. The search services now also operate from multiple data centers placed strategically around the world, offer search in numerous languages, and divide their databases into multiple indexes for static Web content, Web news content, blog content, Web video content, etc.

The search engines also offer other specialized tools, such as local search, commercial product listings, and more. Search engine optimization still seeks to manipulate all of these search indexes, but because the task has become so monumental SEOs now specialize in sub-categories of search optimizations. Some SEOs specialize in link building. Some SEOs specialize in coy writing. Some SEOs specialize in stealth technologies. Some SEOs specialize in local search. Etc.