Google Timeline

                            Google's Growth Timeline

(img credit : lifeofgoogle)

2003

 

In February 2003, Google acquired Pyra Labs, owner of Blogger, a pioneering and leading web log hosting website. The acquisition secured the company's competitive ability to use information gleaned from blog postings to improve the speed and relevance of articles contained in a companion product to the search engine Google News.

 

  

2004

 

After the IPO, Google's stock market capitalization rose greatly and the stock price more than quadrupled. On August 19, 2004 the number of shares outstanding was 172.85 million while the "free float" was 19.60 million . In January 2005 the number of shares outstanding was up 100 million to 273.42 million, 53% of that was held by insiders, which made the float 127.70 million . The two founders are said to hold almost 30% of the outstanding shares . The company has not reported any treasury stock holdings as of the Q3 2004 report.

2005

On June 1, 2005 , Google shares gained nearly four percent after Credit Suisse First Boston raised its price target on the stock to $350. On that same day, rumors circulated in the financial community that Google would soon be included in the S&P 500. When companies are first listed on the S&P 500 they typically experience a bump in share price due to rapid accumulation of the stock within index funds that track the S&P 500. Nevertheless, on June 7, 2005, Google was valued at nearly $52 billion, making it one of the world's biggest media companies by stock market value.

 

2006

 

While the company's primary market is in the web content arena, Google has also recently began to experiment with other markets, such as radio and print publications. On January 17, 2006 , Google announced that it had purchased the radio advertising company dMarc, which provides an automated system that allows companies to advertise on the radio . 

2007

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. 

Search algorithm update -  It is not considered a deliberate update, but rather an accumulation of many smaller changes .

 

²⁰⁰⁸

 

Google  Suggest (later called Autocomplete), originally launched as a Labs feature in December 2004, now becomes part of  Google's main site.

Search algorithm update - Google is pushing its own properties, such as Google Books

 

2009 

 

Search algorithm update - The Vince update happens. Matt Cutts calls it a minor change, but some SEO commentators consider it major . Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! announce joint support for tags that help bots identify canonical versions of webpages without affecting human visitors.

Google launches real-time search for real-time Twitter feeds, Google News, and other freshly indexed content

 

 

²⁰¹⁰

 

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 .Google claims that this is estimated to save 2–5 seconds per search query . SEO commentators initially believe that this will have a major effect on search engine optimization, but soon revise downward their estimate of the impact.

 

²⁰¹¹

 

Google rolls out expanded sitelinks, starting with 12-pack links . 

Google rolls out pagination elements for websites to communicate to

Google that various webpages are different pages of the same article. 

Google announces that they will start encrypting all search queries for security purposes

2012

Google rolls out a major update to Google Panda (the update is to the underlying algorithm, rather than merely being a data refresh), that would be dubbed Panda 4.0, but SEO commentators decide to simply call it Panda #20. The change is estimated to have affected 2.4% of search queries.

Google announces changes in the way it handles Exact-Match Domains. The change is estimated to have affected 0.6% of search queries. 

 

2013

 

Google adds a new feature called "in-depth articles" in its search results to feature long-form content of long-lasting value .

Google releases Google Hummingbird, a core algorithm update that may enable more semantic search and more effective use of the Knowledge Graph in the future.

And the Google History still continues  . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Categories: Google History