Now it's time to move from theory into practice when it comes to search algorithms, by discussing real life examples. In this lesson, we'll discuss some of the earliest algorithm updates, namely Florida, Austin, and Brandy. Those names might not mean a lot right now, but you'll get acquainted with how the SEO community brands these updates in order to discuss their impact. In learning about these updates, you'll also learn what kinds of negative SEO practice they were designed to fight. And, how you can avoid building these poor practices into your website. Let's start back in 2003 when the search landscape changed dramatically after Google released it's update code named Florida. The term search engine optimization was relatively unknown back then. SEOs could easily get a website to rank number 1 by stuffing a few extra keywords into the copy and building out links with keyword reach anchor text. Web masters were creating sites on a variety of topics, and making a good income from ad revenue and affiliate marketing. Then in November of 2003, right before the holiday season, the Florida update was rolled out. A lot of sites disappeared from the map. Business owners and web masters who made a living off the income earned from these sites were furious. Many of these sites were suddenly receiving no traffic, or very little. Some theories existed at the time that sites which focused on what we referred to as money terms, such as buy christmas presents or diet pills or online poker were hit harder than others. This seemed to be the case at the time as commercial related queries lost more rankings than others did. However, that could also be attributed to the fact that many of these sites used spammy SEO tactics, which the Florida update aimed to filter out. Many of the pages which were filtered out of search results practiced low level SEO techniques. These techniques included repetitive use of the same anchor text or hyperlink text in their backlink profiles. For example, using the text buy christmas presents as a link pointing to their site. Keyword stuffing in both the page title and the page copy. This meant that the keyword, for example Rolex watches, would be repeated over and over again within the copy of the page. This made the article sound unnatural and purposefully optimized. Another issue was lack of a consistent theme, which supported the keyword usage in backlinks. This means that the website often didn't have a cohesive theme and was either a single page focused on selling watches, or an entire site that recommended people buy everything from watches to dog food bowls. This update put SEO on the map. It was also the first update that made SEO more complicated. This is because the algorithm shifted to provide better results for users rather than organizing results based on easily manipulated signals. This set the foundation for more hard-hitting SEO updates in the future and the need to broaden your SEO strategy, and focus beyond simple SEO tactics. A few months later, in January of 2004, the algorithm named Austin rolled out And this cleaned up additional spammy websites that Florida missed. Websites which utilized poor tactics and thought they had escaped the Florida update were knocked down. Sites which were affected included those who use spammy SEO tactics. These tactics included things like invisible text on the page. This allowed webmasters to incorporate more keywords into the site without making the site look spammy to users. For example, using white text on a white background at the bottom of the page. This meant that search engines would see keywords like Rolex watches multiple times, but users would see a simple blank page. Another area that the update was focused around was the meta-keywords tag. At the time, many webmasters would overload the meta-keywords tag with hundreds of keywords. This could sometimes be a full page in length. After this update, optimization of the meta-keywords tag began to decline. Today it is no longer a valid signal on Google and most US based search engines. With the Florida and subsequent Austin update, The SEO industry began to sit up and take notice about how SEO should be practiced going forward. The following update dubbed Brandy was rolled out a month later. Brandy not only included a massive expansion of Google's index, but also incorporated some significant changes to the algorithm. The notable changes included LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI helps Google to conceptually understand a page prior to ranking it for a specific term or query. This is based on natural language patterns, which can mathematically approximate a good understanding of the purpose of a page or document. It relies heavily on synonyms to help Google determine that a page may actually be about a specific topic rather than a gibberish article with a few key words stuffed in. Now, if you are writing a page about baseball for example, Google will look at the rest of the text on the page to determine if other words related to baseball are included. This means that the article contains words like bat, pitcher, dugout, and home run that the article is more relevant to baseball. Another major change of the Brandy update related to inbound links and link neighborhoods. Basically, if your site is about baseball, it would make sense to have links from baseball or sports related sites since they are in your same neighborhood. It is also important what types of sites you link out to and the authority of those sites you are linking to. This help Google more easily define the neighborhood you are in. For example, if you only link to spammy sites and vice versa, you are not in a very good neighborhood and Google would be hesitant to send users there. That completes the video portion of this lesson.
