To give you a snapshot of all of the issues that Google's algorithm changes have addressed over the years, we teamed up with Moz to create this infographic. Learn more about what these algorithm changes mean for modern SEO here: http://bit.ly/seo-myths-14

1. A VISUAL HISTORY OF GOOGLE ALGORITHM CHANGES
Over the years, Google has made thousands of changes to the way it finds and prioritizes
information on the web. While most of these changes have been small, there have also been
several major changes, which have significantly impacted how marketers think about SEO.
Below is a snapshot of when (and why) Google rolled out its most notable algorithm changes.
Note: We’ve also included some important, non-algorithm changes that have had a big impact on search.
YEAR
DEC
EMB
ER
JAN
‘03
UAR
Y
‘04
‘05
FEB
ER
‘06
EMB
RY
NOV
RUA
‘07
‘08
‘09
‘10
‘11
OCTOBER
MARCH
‘12
SEP
APRIL
ER
TEMB
‘13
Y
AUG
JUNE
US
T
J U LY
FEBRUARY
BOSTON
APRIL
CASSANDRA
Crackdown on linking
from co-owned
domains, hidden
text & links.
2004
MAY
DOMINIC
More emphasis on
quality backlinks.
MA
2003
Improvements to
the counting &
reporting of
backlinks.
JUNE/JULY
ESMERELDA
& FRITZ
Improvements
to the index
infrastructure.
NOVEMBER
FLORIDA
JANUARY
AUSTIN
FEBRUARY
BRANDY
Crackdown on
keyword-stuffing
& other black hat
SEO tactics.
Crackdown on
“invisible” text,
meta tag-stuffing.
Index expansion,
rollout of Latent
Semantic Indexing
(LSI).
2005
FEBRUARY
ALLEGRA
Crackdown on
suspicious-looking
links.
MAY
BOURBON
JUNE
PERSONALIZED
Improvements to how SEARCH
duplicate content &
non-canonical URLs
are treated.
2007
MAY
UNIVERSAL
SEARCH
Integration of
traditional results
with News, Video,
Images, Local, etc.
OCTOBER
JAGGER
OCTOBER
GOOGLE LOCAL
DECEMBER
BIG DADDY
Crackdown on
reciprocal links, link
farms, paid links.
Map data is
integrated with Local
Business Center
(LBC) data.
Updates to URL
canonicalization,
redirects, & other
technical issues.
2008
Google+ data & user
profiles included in
search results.
Changes to the
supplemental index &
filtered pages.
2009
APRIL
DEWEY
FEBRUARY
VINCE
DECEMBER
REAL-TIME SEARCH
THE BIG ONES
PANDA & PENGUIN
Update to singleword search results
& other small
changes.
Unspecified update
to the search index.
Big brands get a
boost in search
results.
Twitter feeds, Google
News, & new content
are integrated into
real-time feed.
Rolled out in 2011, the Panda
update affected 11.8% of queries
and was specifically targeted at
article directories (a.k.a. "content
farms"). As a result, sites including
wisegeek.com, suite101.com, and
ezinearticles.com saw huge drops
in their search results rankings.
2010
Crackdown on
low-quality pages
ranking for long-tail
keyword searches.
2011
JUNE
CAFFEINE
FEBRUARY
PANDA
Launch of new web
indexing system,
resulting in 50%
fresher index.
Crackdown on thin
content, content
farms, sites with high
ad-to-content ratio.
NOVEMBER
FRESHNESS
UPDATE
Greater emphasis put
on recent content in
search results.
The Penguin update (2012)
affected an estimated 3.1% of
English searches. Gaming sites and
porn sites were among the biggest
search ranking losers.
2012
JANUARY
SEARCH +
YOUR WORLD
NOVEMBER
SUPPLEMENTAL
UPDATE
JUNE
BUFFY
MAY
APRIL
GOOGLE PLACES MAY DAY
LBC rebranded
“Places,” is integrated
more closely with
local search results.
Results take user’s
search history into
account.
2006
FEBRUARY
VENICE
APRIL
PENGUIN
More localized
results appear for
broad queries.
Crackdown on link
schemes, keywordstuffing, other black
hat tactics.
SOURCE:
http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change
LEARN MORE:
http://bit.ly/seo-myths-14
2013
MAY
KNOWLEDGE
GRAPH
SEPTEMBER AUGUST
EXACT MATCH
IN-DEPTH
DOMAIN
ARTICLES
Relevant facts &
images included
alongside traditional
results.
Crackdown on
low-quality sites that
have search terms in
their domain names.
New type of result,
dedicated to more
evergreen, long-form
content.
AUGUST
HUMMINGBIRD
Google recognizes
full-question
searches, emphasizes
high-quality content.