SOURCE: http://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

LEARN MORE:http://bit.ly/seo-myths-14

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Big brands get a boost in search results.

FEBRUARYVINCE

Twitter feeds, Google News, & new content are integrated into real-time feed.

DECEMBERREAL-TIME SEARCH

LBC rebranded “Places,” is integrated more closely with local search results.

APRILGOOGLE PLACES

Crackdown on low-quality pages ranking for long-tail keyword searches.

MAYMAY DAY

Launch of new web indexing system, resulting in 50% fresher index.

JUNECAFFEINE

Crackdown on thin content, content farms, sites with high ad-to-content ratio.

FEBRUARYPANDA

Greater emphasis put on recent content in search results.

NOVEMBERFRESHNESS UPDATE

Google+ data & user profiles included in search results.

JANUARYSEARCH + YOUR WORLD More localized

results appear for broad queries.

FEBRUARYVENICE

Crackdown on link schemes, keyword-stuffing, other black hat tactics.

APRILPENGUIN

Relevant facts & images included alongside traditional results.

MAYKNOWLEDGE GRAPH

Crackdown on low-quality sites that have search terms in their domain names.

SEPTEMBEREXACT MATCH DOMAIN

New type of result, dedicated to more evergreen, long-form content.

AUGUSTIN-DEPTHARTICLES Google recognizes

full-question searches, emphasizes high-quality content.

AUGUSTHUMMINGBIRD

More emphasis on quality backlinks.

FEBRUARYBOSTON

Crackdown on linking from co-owned domains, hidden text & links.

APRILCASSANDRA

Improvements to the counting & reporting of backlinks.

MAYDOMINIC

Improvements to the index infrastructure.

JUNE/JULY ESMERELDA& FRITZ Crackdown on

keyword-stuffing & other black hat SEO tactics.

NOVEMBERFLORIDA

Crackdown on “invisible” text, meta tag-stuffing.

JANUARYAUSTIN

Crackdown on suspicious-looking links.

FEBRUARYALLEGRA

Improvements to how duplicate content & non-canonical URLs are treated.

MAY BOURBON

Results take user’s search history into account.

JUNEPERSONALIZED SEARCH Crackdown on

reciprocal links, link farms, paid links.

OCTOBERJAGGER

Map data is integrated with Local Business Center (LBC) data.

OCTOBERGOOGLE LOCAL

Updates to URL canonicalization, redirects, & other technical issues.

DECEMBERBIG DADDY

Changes to the supplemental index & filtered pages.

NOVEMBERSUPPLEMENTALUPDATE

Integration of traditional results with News, Video, Images, Local, etc.

MAY UNIVERSAL SEARCH Update to single-

word search results & other small changes.

JUNE BUFFY

Unspecified update to the search index.

APRILDEWEY

Index expansion, rollout of Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI).

FEBRUARYBRANDY

A VISUAL HISTORY OF GOOGLE ALGORITHM CHANGESA VISUAL HISTORY OF GOOGLE ALGORITHM CHANGESOver 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.

2003 2004

2005 2006

2007 2008 2009

2010

2012 2013

2011

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.

The Penguin update (2012) affected an estimated 3.1% of English searches. Gaming sites and porn sites were among the biggest search ranking losers.

THE BIG ONESPANDA & PENGUIN