Google Search, offered by Google, is the most widely used search engine on the World Wide Web as of 2023, with over eight billion searches a day. This page covers key events in the history of Google's search service.
For a history of Google the company, including all of Google's products, acquisitions, and corporate changes, see the history of Google page.
Year Month and date (if available) Event type Event 1996 August Prelude Larry Page and Sergey Brin, graduate students in computer science at Stanford University, begin working on BackRub, the precursor to Google Search. Page begins work alone initially, supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship, and Brin joins him shortly thereafter. The project is an outgrowth of their work on the Stanford Digital Library Project.[2][3][4][5] Scott Hassan is the project's lead programmer, writing much of the code for the original Google Search engine.[6][7] Web crawling begins in March. 1997 September 15 Domain The domain Google.com is registered.[8] 2000 May 9 Internationalization Google adds ten new languages: French, German, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Norwegian and Danish.[8] 2000 September 12 Internationalization Google launches search services in Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.[9] 2000 October Advertising Google AdWords launches with 350 customers.[8] 2000 December User experience Google Toolbar is released, allowing people to search without visiting the Google homepage, and also offering them more information about the webpages they visit.[8] Some commentators have argued that this marks the beginning of search engine optimization and the Google Dance.[10] 2001 July Search category Google launches Google Image Search with over 250 million images in its search database.[8] 2001 December Review Google releases its first annual Google Zeitgeist.[8] 2002 September Search category Google launches Google News.[8] 2002 September Search algorithm update Google makes the first publicly announced update to its search algorithm.[10] A number of Internet commentators view this as the death of PageRank (the name for Google's system for ranking pages) and a significant decline in the quality of Google's search results.[11][12][13] 2003 February Search algorithm update Google announces the Boston update at SES Boston. The update saw major algorithmic changes and the promise of frequent index updates.[10] 2003 April Search algorithm update Google announces the Cassandra update. The update claims to crack down on link spam, including mutual links between co-owned websites, as well as hidden text and hidden links.[10][14] 2003 May Search algorithm update Google announces the Dominic update. Commentators believed that the update affected the way backlinks were counted, and many webmasters reported new bots from Google that bounced.[10][15] 2003 June Search algorithm update Google announces what will later turn out to have been the last of its regular monthly updates. This update is called the Esmeralda update.[10][16] 2003 July Search algorithm update Google announces the Fritz update, and also a change to its update policy, as it moves towards continuous rather than batch processing of updates.[10][17][18] 2003 September Search algorithm update Google announces a "supplemental index" in order to be able to index some parts of the web more rapidly.[19] The supplemental index would eventually be scrapped. 2003 November Search algorithm update Google announces the Florida update, which commentators consider game-changing in that it completely destroyed the value of 1990s SEO tactics and ushered in a new era of search engine optimization.[20] 2003 December Search category Google launches Google Print, that would later become Google Books.[8] 2004 January Search algorithm update Google announces the Austin update, to continue with the work of combating SEO tactics that Florida had made good progress on.[10][21][22] 2004 February 17–20 Search algorithm update Google announces the Brandy update, a massive index expansion, Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), increased attention to anchor text relevance, and the concept of link "neighborhoods."[10][23][24] 2004 October Search category Google launches Google Scholar, its search service for academic publications.[8] 2004 December User experience Google Suggest is introduced as a Google Labs feature.[25][26] 2005 January Search algorithm update To combat link spam, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft collectively introduce the nofollow attribute.[10][27][28] 2005 February 2 Search algorithm update Google announces the Allegra update, whose effects are unclear.[10][29][30] 2005 May Search algorithm update Google announces the Bourbon update.[10][31][32][33] 2005 June Webmaster tools Google allows webmasters to submit XML sitemaps via Webmaster Tools, bypassing the need for HTML sitemaps.[10][34] 2005 June User experience Google launches personalized search that automatically taps into users' web histories.[35][36] 2005 June User experience Google launches Google Mobile Web Search.[8] 2005 September Search algorithm update Although Google denies running an update, Matt Cutts clarifies that PageRank was refreshed for some pages recently (with a three-month refresh cycle) causing changes to many site ranks. Observers call this the Gilligan update.[10][37][38] 2005 September–November Search algorithm update Google announces and rolls out the Jagger update in three stages, one in September, one in October, one in November.[10][39][40] 2005 December (rollout continues till March 2006) Search algorithm update Google begins rolling out the Big Daddy update, continuing for the next few months until March 2006. The update changes URL canonization, site redirects, and related items.[10][41] 2006 May Review Google releases Google Trends to make it easy to visualize the popularity of searches over time.[8] 2007 May 16 Search algorithm update + user experience Google launches Universal Search, integrating traditional search results with results from Google News, Google Image Search, Google Video Search, and other verticals. This is believed to be a major milestone in the user experience.[8][10][42][43] 2007 June Search algorithm update The Buffy update happens. It is not considered a deliberate update, but rather an accumulation of many smaller changes.[10][44][45] 2008 March/April Search algorithm update The Dewey update seems to lead to a large-scale shuffling of results. Some observers believe that Google is pushing its own properties, such as Google Books, but evidence of this is limited.[10][46] 2008 August 25 User experience Google Suggest (later called Autocomplete), originally launched as a Labs feature in December 2004, now becomes part of Google's main site.[8][25][26] 2009 February Search algorithm update The Vince update happens. Matt Cutts calls it a minor change, but some SEO commentators consider it major.[10][47] 2009 February Webmaster tools Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! announce joint support for tags that help bots identify canonical versions of webpages without affecting human visitors.[48][49] 2009 August 10 (announced), rollout completed and made live June 8, 2010 Search algorithm update Named Caffeine, this update is announced on August 10, 2009. It promises faster crawling, expansion of the index, and a near-real-time integration of indexing and ranking.[10][50][51][52][53] The rollout is made live on June 8, 2010.[54][55][56] 2009 October 26 Search category Google introduces Social Search as a Google Labs feature.[57] The feature is expanded further in late January 2010.[58] 2009 December 7 Search category Google launches real-time search for real-time Twitter feeds, Google News, and other freshly indexed content.[10][59][60] 2010 Late April, early May Search algorithm update The update, named May Day, is an algorithm change affecting the long tail. Foreshadowing Google Panda, the update penalizes sites with large amounts of thin content.[10][61][62] 2010 September 8 User experience Google launches Google Instant, described as a search-before-you-type feature: as users are typing, Google predicts the user's whole search query (using the same technology as in Google Suggest, later called the autocomplete feature) and instantaneously shows results for the top prediction.[63][64][65] Google claims that this is estimated to save 2–5 seconds per search query.[66] SEO commentators initially believe that this will have a major effect on search engine optimization, but soon revise downward their estimate of the impact.[10][67] 2010 November 9 User experience Google launches Instant Previews, a feature where users can view previews of the ranked pages by hovering over the links in the search engine results page.[10][68][69][70] 2010 December 1 Search algorithm update Google updated its algorithm to penalize websites that provided a bad experience to users. The update is prompted by a November 26 New York Times story about a fraudulent company called DecorMyEyes that used the publicity generated by negative customer reviews to rise in the search engine rankings.[10][71][72] 2010 December Search algorithm update (announcement/confirmation) Both Google and Microsoft's Bing indicate that they use social signals, including signals from Twitter and Facebook, to rank search results.[10][73][74][75] 2011 January–February Search algorithm update Foreshadowing Google Panda, Google penalizes Overstock.com and JCPenney for the use of SEO tactics.[10][76][77] 2011 January 28 Search algorithm update Google launches its Attribution algorithm change to better sieve out websites that scrape content. Matt Cutts claims that slightly over 2% of search queries are affected, but less than 0.5% of results change noticeably.[10][78][79] 2011 February 23–24 Search algorithm update Google launches Google Panda, a major update affecting 12% of search queries. The update continues with the earlier work of cracking down on spam, content farms, scrapers, and websites with a high ad-to-content ratio.[10][80][81][82] The rollout is gradual over several months, and Panda will see many further updates. 2011 March 30 User experience, incorporation of user feedback Google launches the +1 button so that users can offer feedback on search results.[83] Commentators liken this to the like button seen on Facebook.[84][85] 2011 April 11 Search algorithm update Google rolls out Panda to all English queries worldwide (not limited to English-speaking countries) and integrates new signals into its ranking algorithm.[10][86][87] 2011 May 9 Search algorithm update Google rolls out further minor updates to Panda but does not discuss them in detail, saying they are more like Panda 2.1 than Panda 3.0.[10][88][89] 2011 June 2 Webmaster tools Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft announce Schema.org, a joint initiative that supports a richer range of tags that websites can use to convey better information.[10][90][91][92] 2011 June 21 Search algorithm update Google rolls out Panda 2.2.[10][93][94][95] 2011 July 23 Search algorithm update Google rolls out Panda 2.3.[10][96] 2011 August 12 Search algorithm update Google rolls out Panda 2.4, making Panda available in all languages around the world, except Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.[10][97][98] 2011 August 16 User experience Google rolls out expanded sitelinks, starting with 12-pack links (but later reducing to 6-pack).[10][99][100] 2011 September 15 Webmaster tools Google rolls out pagination elements for websites to communicate to Google that various webpages are different pages of the same article.[10][101][102] 2011 September 30 Search algorithm update Google rolls out Panda 2.5.[10][103] Although the specifics of the update are unclear, a few sites gain significantly and a few others lose significantly.[104] Other minor flux updates occur on October 3, October 5 and October 13, and some commentators call these Panda 3.0 and 3.1.[10][105] 2011 October 18 User experience, SEO data Google announces that they will start encrypting all search queries for security purposes.[106] This disrupts organic keyword referral data for many websites, making search engine optimization harder.[107] 2011 November 3 Search algorithm update Google announces a Freshness update that would give priority to fresher, more recent search results, and claims this could affect 35% of search queries.[108][109][110] The algorithm largely affects time-sensitive queries. A number of sites gain and many others lose as a result of the update.[111] 2011 November 14 Search algorithm update Google announces a 10-pack of updates, and says that this begins a series of monthly announcements of packs of updates.[10][112] 2011 November 18 Search algorithm update Google releases an allegedly minor Panda update, which SEO commentators label as Panda 3.1, despite the lack of a generally agreed upon update named Panda 3.0.[10][113][114] 2012 December 2011-January 2012 (announced January 5) Search algorithm update, user experience A 30-change pack of updates, including landing-page quality detection, more relevant site-links, more rich snippets, and related-query improvements.[115] 2012 January 10 Search algorithm update, user experience Google launches Search Plus Your World, a deep integration of one's social data into search.[116][117] SEO commentators are critical of how the search results favor Google+ and push it to users, compared to more widely used social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.[118][119][120][121] 2012 January 19 Search algorithm update Google updates its algorithm to introduce a penalty for websites with too many ads "above the fold". The update has no name, but some SEOs use "Top Heavy" to describe the update.[10][122] 2012 February 27 Search algorithm update The update, codenamed Venice, is announced as part of Google's end-of-February 40-pack update. Venice seemed to give substantially increased weightage to local results (location inferred from the user's IP and other signals) for many search queries, such as those looking for businesses of various types in the vicinity.[10][123][124] On the same date, Google rolls out Panda 3.3, which it bills as a data refresh rather than an algorithm change.[125] 2012 March 23, April 19, April 27 Search algorithm update March 23: Google rolls out Panda 3.4, which is claimed to affect 1.6% of search queries.[126](announced September 23)
Penguin 4.0 After almost two years of waiting, Google finally announced a major Penguin update. They suggested the new Penguin is now real-time and baked into the "core" algorithm. The rollout of the new, "gentler" Penguin algorithm, which devalues bad links instead of penalizing sites.[10] 2017 January 10 Intrusive Interstitial Penalty Google started rolling out a penalty to punish aggressive interstitials and pop-ups that might damage the mobile user experience. Google also provided a rare warning of this update five months in advance.[10] 2018 March 8 Core Update "Brackets" Google Made a core update into their algorithm this updated was termed as "Brackets" by Glenn Gabe. This update effected the search ranks to improve it further. 2019 December 9 BERT - Update In October Google updated its algorithm to support BERT - NLP model. This update helps google to improve the interpretation of natural languages. In December Google extended the BERT update internationally into 70 languages. They confirmed that this algorithm update was rolled out to 70 languages 2021 November 30 (rollout begins) - December 8 Vicinity Update The Vicinity Update is the biggest update to local SERPs since 2017. This algorithm update made it so that smaller businesses that are closer to the searcher will show up as a search result, rather than only the dominant, larger businesses that are farther away. 2022 May 25 (rollout begins) - June 9 May 2022 Core Update The May 2022 Core Update was shown to negatively affect the rankings for most news and media publishers, especially generalist news sites that cover a variety of topics. Reference sites like dictionaries, unofficial Wikis, lyric websites, and stock photo sites also saw a drop in rankings, while video site like YouTube, TikTok, Disney+, Hulu, and Twitch saw the largest gains in ranking.[200][201] 2022 Aug 25 Helpful Content Update The August 2022 Helpful Content update completed its rollout on September 9. The target of the update was, “content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines rather than to help or inform people."[202] 2022 Sep 12 September 2022 Core Update[203] The update took 14 days.[204] Volatility was lower than many prior similar updates.[205] 2022 Dec 5 December 2022 Helpful Content Update The update took 38 days to roll out.[206] It reportedly improves Google's classifier, and works across all content and all languages. 2023 Mar 15 March 2023 Core Update The March 2023 Core Update caused a larger spike in volatility that the September Update. According to Semrush, the largest impacted sectors were Shopping and A&E. 2023 Aug 22 August 2023 Core Update The update took 16 days to roll out.[207] The biggest gains seemed to be felt by UGC and Reddit, as well as gains from site showing evidence of experience in the subject.[208] 2023 Sep 14 September 2023 Helpful Content Update This update contained important changes to how sites are ranked including demoting third-party content hosted on sub-domains, and loosening the guidelines around AI-generated content being devalued.[209] 2023 Oct 4 October 2023 Spam Update Enhanced coverage for more languages and additional types of spam.[210] 2023 Oct 5 October 2023 Core Update The rollout took 14 days. There was high volatility reported by many of the SEO ranking tools.[211] 2023 Nov 2 November 2023 Core Update The second core update in as many months is a rare occurrence.[212] 2024 Mar 5 March 2024 Core Update This update combines Helpful Content Updates in with the core update and includes efforts against scaled content abuse, site reputation abuse and expired domain abuse.[213] 2024 August 15 August 2024 Core Update This update rolled out over 19 days. [214] 2024 November 11 November 2024 Core Update This update rolled out over 23 days.[215] 2024 December 12 December 2024 Core Update This update rolled out over 6 days.[216] 2025 March 13 March 2025 Core Update This update is estimated to take up to two weeks to complete.RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
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