Technical SEO, from past to present, and its influence on your Google rankings
You’ll most likely be familiar with the concept of the pillars of SEO. Whether you’re talking about 3 (technical, content, and authority) or 4 pillars (technical, content, on-page, and off-page SEO), these segments make up the foundation of a functional SEO strategy. But you probably know that already. What is more of a mystery still, is how we got to the current state of these pillars, and what came before. So join us while we take a closer look at the history of the first pillar: technical SEO.
The Status Quo
Technical SEO is a non-negotiable if you want to rank in today’s SERPs. Websites that don’t adhere to the technical SEO standards will simply not be shown in search results.
Some of the top technical SEO factors are page speed, measured with the help of the Google Core Web Vitals, mobile-friendliness, and user experience. These three factors go hand in hand, to improve one, you have to improve the others.
To finish the list off, we have user-friendly navigation, site-architecture and sitemap, safety, and accessibility. This last factor is not unique to Google, or any search engine for that matter. Laws regarding online inclusivity are getting stricter, and with good reason!
Check out our blogpost on website optimisation for a deep dive into the technical SEO factors. If you have any questions afterwards, we’ll be happy to help.
From Launch to the Present: How Did the Google Search Updates Impact Technical SEO?
Google Search was first launched back in 1998, together with PageRank. The past 27 years, the search engine has undergone countless large and small updates, evolving from simple indexing based on keywords to the AI-driven algorithm we know today.
Google Search differed from existing search engines in the way in which it ranked websites. Instead of looking at search terms and how many times they appeared on a page, Google Search used the PageRank algorithm to track incoming and outgoing links. Pages with the most incoming links from other highly relevant web pages were seen as the most important ones.
Google Mobile Web Search
The first mobile phone with internet access, the Nokia 9000 Communicator, hit the market in 1996. Around 2002, six years later, internet access became available on most ‘smartphones’. And one more year later, in 2003, Google had already jumped on the bandwagon with Google Mobile Web Search.
The internet had just about left infancy, the larger public had only gained access in the 90s, and yet, Google was already looking straight ahead to a future of mobile search. The Mobile Web Index was developed to offer their users mobile-friendly websites, but it would take a while longer before mobile web design actually became a ranking factor
Google Caffeine Update
The Google Caffeine update, rolled out in 2010, was one of the first big algorithm updates that directly impacted technical SEO. Earlier algorithm changes had mainly involved content and link building, but the Caffeine update focussed on website indexing, and more specifically, indexing faster and more regularly.
The goal? To provide users with newer information faster.
It suddenly became much more important to make sure that Googlebot could easily crawl and index your web pages. So, this update called more attention to robots.txt-files, robots meta tags, XML sitemap, URL structure, etc.
Google Panda Update
Next came the Panda update, in 2011, with the purpose of weeding out websites with thin content. What does that mean? Websites with content that gives no new or useful information, or have a lot of duplicate content.
The Panda update uses various metrics to assess whether or not a web page meets quality standards. Two of those metrics are bounce rate, and the time that visitors spend on your page, both of which are linked to UX.
If a website was negatively impacted by the Panda update, the most obvious changes to make were to the content. But improving the technical SEO factors could also give your rankings another boost.
We go more into detail about how you can improve UX on your website in this blogpost.
Google Mobilegeddon Update
Possibly the most impactful update for technical SEO was rolled out in 2015. The Mobilegeddon update (lovingly so called by SEOs worldwide), created chaos in the entire SEO field, Google officially became Mobile-first. Was your website not mobile friendly? That would be reflected in your rankings.
As you can imagine, this update had significant consequences for technical SEO. Suddenly, your website had to have a good, user-friendly mobile design if you wanted to be visible in SERPs. What’s more, this update came at a time when page speed and loading times were developing into important ranking factors.
Google had clearly started pushing towards a faster and more user-friendly online experience, especially on mobile devices. They had taken another step in the direction of the experience we know today.
Google Core Web Vitals
In 2021, Google highlighted the Core Web Vitals as important ranking factors. Page speed, responsiveness and visual stability of your website and design more heavily influenced your rankings after this update. Google’s priorities were clear: the best possible UX.
Google SGE
We’ve now landed in the AI era. After a successful inauguration by ChatGPT, among others, Google hopped on the trend with Bart and Search Generative Experience (SGE), in 2023 and 2024. SGE, in a nutshell, is an AI generated overview of the most important information about a query, and is located all the way at the top of SERPs.
If users find all the information they need right on the SERP, it is possible for CTRs to decline. They might not need to visit the source websites of that information. But, on the other hand, visitors that do click through should be better informed about the subject. Now that the AI overview is being rolled out in more countries and for more queries, we’ll soon be able to see its impact on websites.
Did SGE have an impact on technical SEO? Not much, the main focus of Google SGE was useful and quality content. One technical SEO factor that can help your website appear in SGE results is structured data. Structured data, or shema markup, tells search engines what your content is about, which means that your pages can be included in results for relevant queries more easily.
Some more of Google’s tips to get your website ready for AI search are: improve page experience, make your website multimodal with images and videos, and use robots meta tags to control your listing in SERPs.
What Does the Future Hold?
We’ve seen a couple of evolutions over the past few months and year that will most likely continue into the second half of 2025 and into the next few years: the development of AI, mobile-first, and the ever-growing importance of user experience.
How can you prepare your website for the future? Finetune your site’s security, speed, UX, and mobile design, and make sure to implement the most recent accessibility measures.
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