Early Updates[edit]
In its infancy, very little was needed to fully optimize on page content in the eyes of Google.[44] With an inverse relationship between query position (in the HTML tag hierarchy) and weight, it simply boiled down to putting one’s important keywords higher on the HTML tag hierarchy.[45] With this relatively simple algorithm in place, webmasters quickly discovered tricks to vastly boost their SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position). One of the first instances of deceitful SEO came in the form of link keyword stuffing under on page content. As a response, Google removed these sites from its index, a practice it occasionally reverts to as a way of punishing disingenuous webmasters looking to cheat the system. The seemingly arbitrary changes to Googles PageRank algorithm however, led to both community outrage (“many declaring the “death of PageRank”) and a noticeable decline in precision of search results.[46] Google was also constructing its index via a large monthly crawl. Not only did this lock search results to this one month window, it also meant that results would show stale content. An update dubbed “Everflux” introduced fresh crawling (daily crawls) to supplement the larger, primary crawl.[47]Daily crawling added another layer of relevancy, (based upon date and time), to content ranking.[47] The inconsistencies of index versions across data centers during the early implementation of Everflux panicked users, who saw their SERPs fluctuate wildly from day to day.