History of Google Updates Big and Small (Barry Schwartz and Jason Barnard)

Barry Schwartz talks with Jason Barnrad about the history of google updates big and small.

Barry Schwartz is a technologist, search geek, CEO of RustyBrick, founder of Search Engine Roundtable and also a news editor at Search Engine Land. He speaks at many search marketing conferences and technology events like Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies, Pubcon, etc. And provides an advisory role to expert SEOs, internet companies and startups. He also loves to spend the first hours of his morning writing super advanced SEM topics.

Barry takes us on a stroll down the history of Google updates from 2002 to the most recent updates in June and July 2021. Year by year, Barry and Jason go through the significant changes in Google Search, what they changed and how they affected the work and lives of SEOs. Throughout, on message comes through – this is a ongoing process that aims to make Google Search results more relevant, helpful and spam-free for Google’s users.

Barry and Jason provide wonderful explanations of each of these updates plus great insights on how SEOs and website owners were able to fix their drops in rankings.

Google Toolbar — December 1, 2000

Dancing The Google Dance — September 1, 2002

Universal Search — May 1, 2007

Caffeine — June 1, 2010

Panda/Farmer — February 23, 2011

The +1 Button — March 30, 2011

Penguin — April 24, 2012

Exact-Match Domain (EMD) Update — September 27, 2012

“Phantom” — May 9, 2013

“Fred” (Unconfirmed) — March 8, 2017

Hummingbird — August 20, 2013

Page Experience Update — June 25, 2021

What you’ll learn from Barry Schwartz

This is a list that explains each update we discussed (and some more that we didn’t) so that you have some context, especially for the timestamps.

https://moz.com/google-algorithm-change

00:00 Barry Schwartz and Jason Barnard
00:46 Barry Schwartz’s Brand SERP
03:19 The Google Toolbar and and the days of the Google Dance
06:00 We no longer wait for Panda updates because Google’s goal is make it real-time
07:13 When do knowledge panels and knowledge graphs change?
10:23 2007 Google introduced Universal Search – not your typical algorithm update
12:12 Faster crawling and indexation – the Caffeine update
14:31 The failure of Google Plus – will Google try again?
16:02 What’s the difference between Panda and Penguin updates?
20:02 The Exact Match Domain update
22:39 RustyBrick, where did the name come from?
23:27 The mystery behind the Phantom and Fred updates
24:48 Clearing up some misconceptions about the Hummingbird update
29:13 Core Web Vitals have little-to-no influence on rankings
32:10 Crazy daily numbers of never-before-seen pages for GoogleBot
34:16 What Google wants you to do when you’ve been hit by core updates
41:06 How does Barry find the time to do everything he does?