In 2018, Google launched 3,234 improvements to Search. That is an average of 8.86 changes a day. Yowza! Google engineers are busy.

For the curious, I've compiled some videos and quotes from Google engineers that explain very well how an update goes from new idea, to approved, to launched.

If you're short on time and just want a quick summary, watch Video 1 below. It's just under 4 minutes.

But for those of you who are SEO geeks like me and have more time, I present to you a few more videos. Below the videos, I have pulled out snippets from the videos and an article from Google, where I attempt to come up with a more in depth flow of the process behind how SERP and algorithm changes get approved at Google.
<br />

__Video 1: *How Google makes improvements to its search algorithm*__
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J5RZOU6vK4Q" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />

__Video 2: *SMX West 2016 - How Google Works: A Google Ranking Engineer's Story*__
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iJPu4vHETXw" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />

__Video 3: *The Evolution of Search*__
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mTBShTwCnD4" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<br />

__Video 4: *Search Quality Meeting: Spelling for Long Queries*__
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/JtRJXnXgE-A" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

## Goal
Video 3 at 00:08-00:26 —
> "Our goal is actually to make improvements to Search that just answer the user's information need. Get them to their answer faster and faster. So that there's almost a seamless connection between their thoughts and their information needs and the search results that they find."

## Ideas

Video 1 at 00:34-00:37 —
> "The first step in improving Google Search is coming up with an idea."

Video 1 at 00:43-00:50 —
> "Ranking engineers then come up with a hypothesis about what signal, what data, could we integrate into our algorithm."

Video 2 at 25:30-25:42 —
> "[Google has] a team of a few hundred software engineers. They are focused on [the] metrics and signals. They run lots and lots of experiments and they make a lot of changes." And they come up with a lot of ideas.

## Search Quality Tests

Video 1 at 00:50-00:58 —
> "We test all these reasonable ideas through rigorous scientific testing. The first is with raters."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> "We work with external Search Quality Raters to measure the quality of search results on an ongoing basis. Raters assess how well a website gives people who click on it what they are looking for, and evaluate the quality of results based on the expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of the content."

Video 2 at 16:34-16:56 —
> "We published our human rater guidelines last year (in 2015). There are about 160 pages (168 pages in 2019) of great detail about how we think about what's good for users. If you're wondering why Google is doing something, often the answer is to make it look more like what the rater guidelines say.

&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;[You can find the rater guidelines <a href="https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/guidelines.raterhub.com/en//searchqualityevaluatorguidelines.pdf" target=blank>here</a>.]

Rigorous Testing Article —
> 595,429 Search quality tests with raters (2018)

## Side-by-Side Experiments

![Panda Comparison Side by Side](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/4G0YAbhna2iBZBTMACSLjG/02518f0e695bf8b85cf4420e0e6b21cb/Panda_Comparison_Side_by_Side.jpg)

Video 1 at 01:01-01:07 —
> "We [show] these raters side-by-side [experiments] for queries that the engineer's experiment might be affecting.

Rigorous Testing Article —
> In a side-by-side experiment, we show Raters two different sets of search results: one with the proposed change already implemented and one without.

Rigorous Testing Article —
> 44,155 Side-by-side experiments (2018)

## Live Traffic Experiments

Video 1 at 01:11-1:25 —
> "We also confirm these changes with live experiments on real users. And we do this in something that's called a Sandbox. We send a very small fraction of actual Google traffic to the Sandbox. We compute lots of different metrics."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> "We enable the feature in question to just a small percentage of people, usually starting at 0.1%."

Video 2 at 12:48-13:26 —
> "We do A/B experiments on real traffic. And then we look for changes in click patterns. And I should just mention that we run a lot of experiments. It is very rare, if you do a search on Google and you're not in at least one experiment. Now not all of these are ranking experiments. [Famously](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/business/01marissa.html) Google tested the color blue that we use for links and other blue highlighting with 41 different blues and came to the conclusion what was the perfect blue."

Video 2 at 28:36-28:48 —
> "By and large, [Google engineers] try to move results with good human ratings and live experiment ratings up. And move results with bad ratings down."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> 15,096 Live traffic experiments (2018)

## Launch Reports by Quantitative Analysts
Video 2 at 26:31-26:42 —
> "A launch report is written by a quantitative analyst who is basically a statistician and someone who's an expert at analyzing our experiments."

Video 1 at 01:34-01:41 —
> "For each project, it's usually one analyst assigned from the moment that we're talking to the engineers trying to learn about their change.

Video 1 at 01:51-01:58 —
> "Ultimately, the goal of the search eval analyst team is just to provide an informed, data-driven decision and present an unbiased view."

## Launch Reviews

Video 2 at 27:54-28:00 —
> He mentions a video Google created of one of their weekly Search Quality meetings. I'm pretty sure Video 4 above is the one he is referencing.

Video 4 in video description —
> "We hold the meeting almost every Thursday to discuss possible algorithmic improvements and make decisions about what to launch."

Just look how many people are at that meeting. After looking at all the angles, I count at least 37 people crammed into that conference room but I think I'm missing a few more that are behind the cameras angle of vision. That is one expensive meeting!

Video 2 at 27:29-27:41 —
> "We try to debate ... is this good for the users, is this good for the system architecture, are we going to be able to keep improving the system after one of the these changes is made."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> "Of the proposed changes this past year (2018), many never went live, because unless we can show a change actually makes things better for people, we don’t launch it."

## Launch

Video 1 at 2:03-2:10 —
> "If our scientific testing says this is a good idea for Google users, we will launch it on Google."

Video 5 at 0:31-0:48 —
> "We might batch [algorithm changes] up and go to a meeting once a week where we talk about 8 or 10 or 12 or 6 different things that we would want to launch, but then after those get approved ... those will roll out as we can get them into production."

Video 2 at 28:07-28:36 —
> "[Once] approved, getting into production can be an easy thing. Some teams will ship it the same week. Sometimes you have to rewrite your code to actually make it suitable for our production architecture. Making things fast enough, making things clean enough. That can take awhile. I've known it to take months. In the worst case I know about, it took just shy of two years between approval and actually launching."

Rigorous Testing Article —
> 3,234 Launches (2018)

## Issues With The Process and How Google Engineers Fix It

Video 2 at 28:51-32:35 —
This is a great 4 minute segment showing two cases that illustrate where the raters and the metrics weren't cutting it and how the engineers fixed the problem.

Two kinds of problems at the core of everything engineers see:

- Systematically bad ratings
- Metrics don't capture things they care about

Video 2 at 32:28-32:35 —
> "[W]hen the metrics miss something, what ranking engineers need to do is fix the guidelines or develop new metrics."

## Summary

Video 3 at 04:24-04:40 —
> "Our goal is to make it so that the improvement we make is so much what you wanted and fits so cleanly into the flow of what you are looking for that you almost don't notice that it's happened. And looking back at it, it seems obvious that that's the way it should have always been in the first place."

Video 1 at 03:24-03:29 —
> "We've put a huge investment into understanding what works for users."

Video 1 at 03:36-03:41 —
> "I think we get excited when we feel like we've hit on an idea that really helps a lot of users."

As you can see, Google engineers are modern day superheroes. They work very hard to improve Search for all of us. And it's obviously working since Google has been the number one search engine for just under two decades now.

### Appendix A: Videos and Content Quoted
Video 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q
Video 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJPu4vHETXw
Video 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTBShTwCnD4
Video 4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRJXnXgE-A
Video 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_jm_isupFY
Rigorous Testing Article: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/

Other interesting and related articles you'll enjoy:

- [How Often Does Google Update Its Algorithm?](https://moz.com/blog/how-often-does-google-update-its-algorithm)
- [Complex Search-Results Pages Change Search Behavior: The Pinball Pattern](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pinball-pattern-search-behavior/)


Panda Comparison Side by Side

Google engineers have an important and difficult job. Learn how they work to improve the search algorithm.

How Google Engineers Decide What Changes to Make to the Algorithm

We decided to join in on the fun of this time of year and make an SEO christmas song.

We came up with "The 12 Years of Google Updates" which is sung to the tune of the popular (and slightly annoying, I might add) 12 Days of Christmas.

Some Nozzlers were reluctant to participate but in the end everyone did great and we had a lot of fun putting it together. We did practice singing several times to work out some bugs but we decided to only do one video take to keep it a little bit more raw.

Enjoy!

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XeIUKSgiZQU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

## Lyrics:
For the last 12 years of updates, Google gave to us,
{2008} - Google Suggest 
{2009} - Rel Canonical Tags and Vince
{2010} - May Day and Caffeine Rollout
{2011} - Hordes and hordes of Pandas
{2012} - Penguins with more Pandas
{2013} - Hummingbird, Penguins and Pandas
{2014} - SSL is a ranking factor--and another Penguin and some Pandas
{2015} - Mobilegeddon and Rank Brain (with a sign adding "And the last of the Pandas")
{2016} - Penguin 4.0
{2017} - Fred
{2018} - A Broad Core Algo update (with a sign stating "boring")
{2019} - And a BERT... for everyone

I'm realizing now that the lyrics for 2018 would have been better as "Core Updates Unnamed" since there were a handful of them.

## Quick Algo History Lesson:
As all SEO's know, Google updates their algorithm hundreds, even thousands of times a year. In 2018, for example, Google announced that they made [launched 3,234 changes.](https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/users/)

In May, 2019, Dr. Pete from Moz, wrote in depth about [how often Google updates its algorithm](https://moz.com/blog/how-often-does-google-update-its-algorithm). It's interesting to see the increase in changes over the last decade.

## Monitoring the SERPs
With the constant changes happening in the SERPs everyday you need [keyword rank tracker](https://nozzle.io/) to monitor your website rankings. [Sign up for a Nozzle trial today.](https://nozzle.io/trial)



The last 12 years of updates Christmas SEO Song Performers

An SEO version of The 12 Days of Christmas Song.

The 12 Years of Google Updates Christmas Song

TechSEO Boost was the place to be on the 4th and 5th of December if you love SEO. Let me tell you about it. But if you'd rather just watch it, you can find videos of each session [over here](https://www.catalystdigital.com/techseoboost-2019-session-recordings/).

![Meghan, Paul and Derek](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/3nQiHc0loQie5nMx7BcVjQ/7d0f87389ea5b1f3f42c41a0cc0df088/Meghan__Paul_and_Derek.JPG)

## NHL Refs. Who us?

The fun began when we arrived late at night at our hotel located just across from the Boston Garden when a happy drunk man asked if we were NHL refs. The Boston Bruins had apparently just won their game 2-0 across the street and this stranger was convinced we looked just like NHL referees. It took us 10-15 minutes to convince him otherwise.

## Perfectly Organized Event
Anywho, we were happy to sponsor such a great conference. It's a super organized and well run conference. The two day event went very well and never felt rushed. There were great speakers and great food. We truly appreciate all the hard work by all the event coordinators. Meghan Lavin, Paul Shapiro and the rest of the [Catalyst Digital](https://www.catalystdigital.com/) team deserve all the credit.


## The Venue and Fun
The venue was perfect. It was held at the [City Winery](https://citywinery.com/boston/). 

![Welcom to City Winery Mat](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/5q0DxDjsg6oSF3X93P2NgL/2f7bc7a68f69e66140231484ac324509/Welcom_to_City_Winery_Mat.JPG)
![IMG 3476 (1)](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2XpywlLX9umfWWhNCRgA1D/23fdbc7312177b4718f40bf62e39ab38/IMG_3476__1_.JPG) 

Here is a quick video showing the main areas where us SEO nerds hung out for two days.
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/w-Mn5wOzE6E" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>


There were also some fun props to use for taking pictures with old and new friends alike.

![TechSEO Boost Props for photo shoots](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6K6qlMJJujz8pGLcjpn4ZA/28e2d47cdf16da8570556eb28debfeb4/TechSEO_Boost_Props_for_photo_shoots.JPG)


## The Knowledge Disbursed
TechSEO Boost is such a great SEO conference because there is only one track and it's all about technical SEO. There were sessions about a whole bunch of cool topics including:

  - Technical Link Building
  - Crawl Budget
  - Google Apps Script
  - NLP for SEO
  - Googlebot & Javascript
  - Crawling & Rendering
  - Faceted Nav
  - Pagination for SEO

Below is a quick twitter recap of my favorite moments and takeaways from the event:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Nice! <a href="https://twitter.com/SeekerDigital?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@SeekerDigital</a> is running titles of contacts that <a href="https://twitter.com/PitchboxApp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PitchboxApp</a> is pulling back through <a href="https://twitter.com/monkeylearn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@monkeylearn</a> and helping to automate the choosing of contacts to reach out to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techseoboost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techseoboost</a></p>&mdash; MyCool King (@iPullRank) <a href="https://twitter.com/iPullRank/status/1202709546625568769?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

    
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">.<a href="https://twitter.com/SimpsonGareth?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@simpsongareth</a> is automatically classifying email responses in <a href="https://twitter.com/monkeylearn?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@monkeylearn</a> by intent, sentiment and urgency and custom tagging them in <a href="https://twitter.com/PitchboxApp?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PitchboxApp</a> to help them quickly filter their emails so the team can focus emails that are worth responding to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techseoboost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techseoboost</a></p>&mdash; MyCool King (@iPullRank) <a href="https://twitter.com/iPullRank/status/1202710104690307076?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Am I the only one who looks at Googlers in the audience to see their reactions when a speaker says Google does X? In this case I am looking at <a href="https://twitter.com/g33konaut?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@g33konaut</a> during <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a></p>&mdash; Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) <a href="https://twitter.com/rustybrick/status/1202633907981758466?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;It&#39;s not that we have short attention spans, we are good at filter things that aren&#39;t important. It&#39;s about moderating cognitive load.&quot; -<a href="https://twitter.com/dawnieando?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dawnieando</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a></p>&mdash; Jairus Mitchell (@AnInternetRobot) <a href="https://twitter.com/AnInternetRobot/status/1202632199759118337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Humans are informavores. -<a href="https://twitter.com/dawnieando?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dawnieando</a> at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a> (Totally putting that one in my pocket for later.) <a href="https://t.co/Ksuv35m5Sj">pic.twitter.com/Ksuv35m5Sj</a></p>&mdash; Jessica Levenson (@guerillagirl) <a href="https://twitter.com/guerillagirl/status/1202632041810079746?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BERT needs stop words because if you take out the stop words you remove a lot of contextual information -<a href="https://twitter.com/jroakes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jroakes</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a></p>&mdash; Tyler Reardon (@TylerReardon) <a href="https://twitter.com/TylerReardon/status/1202602988969365504?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">If you think ‘Self, there is no way <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TechSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#TechSEOBoost</a> could be as good as the hype.’<br><br>Let me tell you, as a majorly curmudgeonly person, it’s better then that!<br><br>The presentations are top tier, but the networking is s-tier. Any question can get answered. Congrats &amp; thanks <a href="https://twitter.com/fighto?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@fighto</a></p>&mdash; Dan Leibson (@DanLeibson) <a href="https://twitter.com/DanLeibson/status/1202383839949152257?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>


<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">&quot;25% of queries can be answered with less than 1% of URL&#39;s.&quot; <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techseoboost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techseoboost</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/PolarBearby?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@PolarBearby</a><br><br>This stat is both interesting and depressing at the same time.</p>&mdash; Boyd Norwood  (@boydnorwood) <a href="https://twitter.com/boydnorwood/status/1202339394725789697?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techSEOBoost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techSEOBoost</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/ClaudiaFaceoff?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@ClaudiaFaceoff</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Derek_Perkins?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Derek_Perkins</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jsilton?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jsilton</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jroakes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jroakes</a> /5<br><br>key takeaways /2: 🗝️<br> - build things, don&#39;t stress about your self image😅<br> - when you want to build something &gt;&gt; wait!🛑<br> - sometimes the best solution is simple 🔵<br> - understand the problem scope 🧮</p>&mdash; Alexis Sanders (@AlexisKSanders) <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexisKSanders/status/1202330714752126976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 4, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" tw-align-center><p lang="en" dir="ltr">SEO + Google Sheets + JavaScript + Free Code Examples<br><br>Endorsed 💯💯💯<br><br>Thank you <a href="https://twitter.com/dsottimano?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dsottimano</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/techSEOboost?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#techSEOboost</a> <a href="https://t.co/E12gtvzVjY">https://t.co/E12gtvzVjY</a></p>&mdash; Cyrus (@CyrusShepard) <a href="https://twitter.com/CyrusShepard/status/1202457804226740224?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 5, 2019</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The slides by [David Sottimano](https://davidsottimano.com/) that are mentioned in the last tweet and that were a huge favorite [can be found here.](https://www.slideshare.net/dsottimano/techseo-boost-apps-script-for-seos) 

Can't wait for next year's event!


Meghan, Paul and Derek

TechSEO Boost 2019 was full of great speakers, people and food.

We Sponsored TechSEO Boost and Loved Every Minute

Is SEO dead trend on Google coinciding with major updates

Google Trends history for Is SEO Dead 2

A long and a short answer to the question, "Is SEO dead?"

Is SEO Dead?

2020 has finally arrived and since hindsight is 20/20 lets take a look back with perfect vision (still totally subjective, I know) over the last decade and discover what the most impactful change was to the SEO industry.

First of all let me list several big changes that made an impact on me in my career:

- EMD update
- Panda updates
- Penguin updates
- Disavow tools created
- People Also Ask feature in SERPs
- Knowledge Graph - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQl6VGvX-c
- Mobilegeddon
- RankBrain
- Mobile-First indexing
- SSL became a ranking factor
- Pigeon update
- Pandas and penguins become animals that I have a love/hate relationship with now

Then I started wondering what were some of the big milestones hit or changes made by well known companies and communities in the SEO space. I discovered the following:
- <a href="https://www.bing.com/" target="blank">Bing</a> turned 10
- <a href="https://ahrefs.com/about" target="blank">ahrefs</a> was founded and became a powerhouse
- <a href="https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/our-story/" target="blank">Screaming Frog</a> was founded and is the go-to crawler for SEOs
- <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SEO/" target="blank">The SEO subreddit</a> passed the 100k member mark
- <a href="https://moz.com/blog/new-domain-authority" target="blank">Moz</a> launched Domain Authority 2.0
- <a href="https://www.semrush.com/blog/1-year-100-updates-1-000-000-users-what-was-2016-like-for-semrush/" target="blank">SEMRush</a> reached 1,000,000 users in 2016 
- <a href="https://blog.majestic.com/index-updates/majestic-historic-index-update/" target="blank">Majestic</a> crawls over 7 billion URL's

Now to answer the main question, which change to the SEO industry had the biggest impact in the last decade?

Drumroll please...

Hands down, the winner is...__<a href="https://search.googleblog.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html" target="blank">The Penguin update of April 24th, 2012.</a>__

![Emperor Penguin with Crown](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/56hIArgwGTiF0VFVnle8J6/b70e4cbac6099ae74e087ac2427555ba/Emperor_Penguin_with_Crown.jpg)

## Why was the Penguin update the most impactful change of the 2010's?

It forever changed how all SEOs thought about and worked on link building. SEOs to this day have differing opinions on which types of links are acceptable but Penguin moved the bar along the acceptable spectrum for all of us.

It changed how we thought about anchor text and if, and how often, keywords should be used as the anchor text.

It brought about the disavow tools from Bing and Google. (Sidenote: <a href="https://www.seroundtable.com/bing-disavow-links-tool-15370.html" target="blank">Bing launched their disavow tool before Google.</a>)

Many blogging link networks were killed. I know some people still use them to this day but it's not even close to how it was before Penguin.

This was a time of massive SEO cleanup efforts and it scared some SEOs from doing any link building for years to come.

Penguin truly caused a huge paradigm shift about link building that you can only fully grasp if you built links before and after April 24th, 2012.

## What are your thoughts?

Let me know if you agree or disagree in the comments below.

Also, let me know which impactful changes you think I should add to the lists above in the comments section.

### Enjoy these articles as well:

- [How Google Engineers Decide What Changes to Make to the Algorithm](https://nozzle.io/blog/how-google-engineers-decide-what-changes-to-make-to-the-algorithm/)
- [Is SEO Dead?](https://nozzle.io/blog/is-seo-dead/)
- [Nozzle's Keyword Tracking Tool Features](https://nozzle.io/features)


Emperor Penguin with Crown

There have been many changes to the SEO industry in the last 10 years but there can only be one change that created the biggest impact.

The Most Impactful Change to the SEO Industry in the Last Decade

A coworker stumbled upon a tweet yesterday from [@BrittanyZerr](https://twitter.com/BrittanyZerr) which showed a funny featured snippet mistake that the great Google machine made.

![Brittany Zerr Tweet Image of Featured Snippet Gone Wrong](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/6VEnaQ54z7a4keKYC8XfTJ/9631d42512feed28e4a06a6fe4fe1f97/Brittany_Zerr_Tweet_Image_of_Featured_Snippet_Gone_Wrong.JPG)

If you search for "How to make the best risotto", you'll see the featured snippet from the image above at the top of the SERPs. But if you head on over to the [bonappetit article](https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/common-mistakes/article/how-to-make-the-best-risotto-and-avoid-these-8-common-mistakes), you'll see that it's subtitle is, "Here are the 8 most common mistakes people make when cooking the beloved Italian rice dish, so you can avoid them".

As you scroll down you'll see that each numbered item is crossed out as it is something you should avoid if you want to make the best risotto.

![crossed out numbered items as things to avoid-1](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/2Mf4JaPOKI6I93bBFCCuBZ/d24eeb23210a4b51e1e254dceeb22843/crossed_out_numbered_items_as_things_to_avoid-1.JPG)

To be fair, it is a useful list of things that can help you make the best risotto if you avoid doing them but the featured snippet doesn't point out that fact which is where the failure lies. Obviously a human being wouldn't feautre a list of things to avoid doing and present them as things to do. Even the great Google machine can make mistakes and isn't quite human--yet. ;)

__What we can learn from this:__

Google likes to display numbered list snippets when the query implies the searcher is looking for a list of steps to accomplish a specific task.

So if you rank for queries that have this intent, make sure to list the tasks to be performed in an html numbered list.

Furthermore, add a bulleted list to any post or article where it makes sense. People love them because they are skimmable and Google loves them too. 

Your numbered or bulleted lists may not become the featured snippet for a query but they absolutely will not if they do not exist. As they say, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take--so take them!




Google featured snippet showing opposite results than what was intended.

Brittany Zerr Tweet Image of Featured Snippet Gone Wrong

Funny featured snippet mistake that Google made that implies the exact opposite of what was intended.

Google Featured Snippet Mistake and Lesson

On March 28, 2019, [Kevin Indig](https://twitter.com/Kevin_Indig), VP of SEO & Content at [G2.com](https://www.g2.com/), tweeted a question that sparked some good discussion on how to find the best SEO tools to use.

![How do you choose which SEO tool to use and buy from Kevin Indig's tweet](//images.ctfassets.net/z8uwv83tofbw/7ocntSw64U4MFmrlZiRJ0g/b6813e89d8256486c9dbc856871ace98/How_do_you_choose_which_SEO_tool_to_use_and_buy_from_Kevin_Indig_s_tweet.JPG)

With 45 replies and dozens of sub replies, we were able to compile a great list from a host of digital marketers and SEOs. 

__These are the sources people said they use to find SEO tools:__
- Peers/Network/Co-workers/Mentors (17 mentions) 
- SEO articles, blog reviews and case studies mentioning SEO Tools (13 mentions)
- Twitter (9 mentions)
- Event/Conference speakers and sponsors (5 mentions)
- Google (4 mentions)
- Webinars, youtube videos (3 mentions)
- [@G2CrowdReviews](https://twitter.com/G2CrowdReviews) (2 mentions)
- [Product Hunt](https://www.producthunt.com/) (2 mentions)
- Linkedin
- [AppSumo](https://appsumo.com/)
- [Detailed.com](https://detailed.com/)
- [Ahrefs blog](https://ahrefs.com/blog/)
- [Backlinko blog](https://backlinko.com/blog)
- [Moz blog](https://moz.com/blog)
- Google trends
- Forums
- [Search Engine Journal](https://www.searchenginejournal.com/)
- Magazine articles
- Reddit
- Github

__And then this is how they determine whether or not to use/buy the tool they find:__

[David Iwanow (@davidiwanow)](https://twitter.com/davidiwanow) suggested the following:
- CS support and post sales service
- Willingness to improve the product and fix issues/bugs (not shrug them off)
- Aggressively adding to and improving the product
- Proactive support

[Alexandra Tachalova (@AlexTachalova)](https://twitter.com/AlexTachalova) looks to the source:
- Try to understand the {SEO Tools} data source. There are a HUGE number of tools simply reselling someone else's data.

[Arnoldo Cabrera (@spanskseo)](https://twitter.com/spanskseo) looks for the following:
- It is scalable multilingual, geographies, data set
- provides api connectivity not only to your data but to your toolbox
- time saving, e.g. reporting time
- it has good support and product managers listen to the user feedback
- enable cross collaboration outside seo team

[Matt Ramage (@ramagetime)](https://twitter.com/ramagetime)
- Cost and ease of use. And of Course the data.

[Hardik Oza (@Ozaemotion)](https://twitter.com/Ozaemotion) lists the following:
- Freshness of data
- Quality of data rather than quantity
- Number of users
- Support

[Kelly Stanze (@KellyStanze)](https://twitter.com/KellyStanze) offers:
- Similar clientele and their happiness
- The tool features itself, and how data for those tools is supplied/supported
- Support - do we get an account team? What’s included?
- Pricing structure (don’t nickel and dime me)
- Innovation

[Seb Adler (@seoseb)](https://twitter.com/seoseb) advises:
- Does it state to be the all-in-one solution → skip it
- Do a trial, test it on a real life project, check against existing workflows. Does it automate workflows oder provide additional insights? If so:
- Does it integrate well in our data warehousing.

[Damien Anderson (@echwa)](https://twitter.com/echwa) suggests you:
- Understand and document needs
- Ask select vendors to demonstrate to needs

[Willow Colios (@willowcolios)](https://twitter.com/willowcolios) puts forward these thoughts:
- Can you align the tool with team processes and workflow?
- Is it usable for those that use it every day/week?
- Is it a good fit for the organisation
- Right spec at the right price?

[Adam J. Humphreys (@Making8)](https://twitter.com/Making8) offers some great insight:
- Features, UX (time savings, compatibly with other platforms, easily exported reports, actionable data summaries), price compared to others (this really matters as some are 2500 a month per client)
- The best way to engage with us is letting influencers in search test it then blog about it on a main journal.
- One can’t really win over our industry without letting us test it out and given our time constraints we often don’t get to use it right away so capping amount of uses vs time is also best."

__Biggest Takeaway:__
Use your network to find tools that they love and would recommend. If at all possible, sign up for a trial run to find out if it can solve your needs and will be compatible with your processes and workflows. 

It may be cool but is it the right fit?
<div style="width:100%;height:0;padding-bottom:90%;position:relative;"><iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/6klKY9ggNR744" width="100%" height="100%" style="position:absolute" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe></div>

Kevin Indig's tweet asking how do you choose which SEO tool to use/buy?

How do you choose which SEO tool to use and buy from Kevin Indig's tweet

Learn how dozens of marketers find SEO tools and decide which ones to use/buy.

Blog - SEO