2001 vs 2008 Google Result for SEO
For Google’s 10th Anniversary they released access to their oldest index. This allows you to search like it’s 2001. By doing a search for the verticle term “SEO” we can see many, many differences in usability, depth and intent in the Google platform.
The differences are facinating! First and foremost is the evolution of SEO as a concept…it didn’t even exist in 2001! Now a good portion of business hinges on the forces of search engine optimization. There are 280,000,000 results in 2008 for the term SEO, and in 2001 there were 148,000…the kicker is that the number one site for the term SEO was for “Sponsors for Educational Opportunity“!
It’s incredible to look at the old SERP result page and compare it side by side with the SERP for the same term in Google 2008. Looking at them you can see the expansion of Google’s capabilities. You can access Image search, Maps, News, Shopping, Gmail, News, Blogs and groups as options for more refined types of searches. This obviously represents a gigantic expansion of the capability of Google to understand and sort information into relevant verticle entities. It’s also an indicator of the explosion of content available through the search engine.
As for the serps themselves, though Google still utilizes the Title and description as the main result, but we can see a difference in usability. Cached pages and similar pages are accessible for each result. There are also indented results, of additional pages from the same site that match that query which gives individual sites a wider opportunity to dominate the SERP by providing multiple pages of relevant content.
We can see the evolution of search, and just by looking at the development of an entirely new field of work that has been created through this sytem we can see a profound impact on our society. The way that people look for local businesses, find information, find and enjoy video, has all been changed forever. I think that It makes it even more important for us to look to the the future of search as envisioned by Google. I’m quite sure that in 10 years when we look back at our search engine results we’ll be surprised and startled by the dramatic changes in the way that we live our lives.
2 responses so far ↓
Zak Nicola // October 1, 2008 at 8:13 pm |
I’m sure people optimized websites for money in 2001, SEO just wasn’t the buzz word it is now. Aaron Wall played a large part in making “SEO” the buzz term it is today with the first “SEO Book”
jeremypenguin // October 1, 2008 at 8:44 pm |
What you said about SEO Book, that’s true- In fact here’s the serp for “Seo Book” with it’s 11,900 indexed pages
http://www.google.com/search2001/search?q=seo+book&hl=en
What is interesting though is the extent to which we were aware of the search engines culturally. I’m certain that early adopters were already specializing in getting rankings in the search engines, but the proliferation of the idea is in stark contrast to the beginings of SEO.