SEOmoz put together a nice living document on Google’s history of updates, algorithm changes and major user interface changes.
Personally, I find it very useful to see what Google has done in the past because it might help people understand where they are going in the future. In fact, I put together a huge presentation on the history of Google’s updates, mostly pulled from WebmasterWorld and my Google Updates category for that presentation.
In any event, here is the SEOmoz list followed by my more concise list:
SEOmoz Google Update List:
Google Toolbar – December 2000
Boston – February 2003
Cassandra – April 2003
Dominic – May 2003
Esmerelda – June 2003
Fritz – July 2003
Florida – November 2003
Austin – January 2004
Brandy – February 2004
Google IPO – August 2004
Nofollow – January 2005
Allegra – February 2005
Bourbon – May 2005
XML Sitemaps – June 2005
Personalized Search – June 2005
Gilligan – September 2005
Google Local/Maps – October 2005
Jagger – October 2005
Big Daddy – December 2005
Supplemental Index – November 2006
Universal Search – May 2007
Buffy – June 2007
Dewey – April 2008
Google Suggest – August 2008
Vince – February 2009
Rel-canonical Tag – February 2009
Caffeine – August 2009
Real-time Search – December 2009
Google Places – April 2010
May Day – May 2010
Brand Update – August 2010
Google Instant – September 2010
Instant Previews – November 2010
Social Signals – December 2010
Overstock.com Penalty – January 2011
Panda/Farmer – February 23, 2011
The +1 Button – March 30, 2011
Panda 2.0 – April 11, 2011
Panda 2.1 – May 9, 2011
Schema.org – June 2, 2011
Panda 2.2 – June 21, 2011
Google+ – June 28, 2011
Panda 2.3 – July 23, 2011
My Google Update List:
Fritz (Summer 2003)
Florida (November 2003)
Austin Update (Jan 2004)
The Sandbox (April 2004)
Bourbon (May 2005)
Big Daddy (October 2005)
Supplemental (Jan 2007)
Paid Links (October 2007)
Dewey Update (Mar 2008)
Vince / Brand (March 2009)
May Day (May 2010)
Caffeine (June 2010)
Scraper Filter (Jan. 2011)
Panda (February 2011)
What do you think? Useful or not?
Forum discussion at Sphinn.
