SEO began in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, all a webmaster needed to do was submit a site to the various engines which would run spiders, programs to “crawl” the site, and store the collected data. The search engines then sorted the information by topic, and served results based on pages they had spidered. As the number of documents online kept growing, and more webmasters realized the value of organic search listings, so popular search engines began to sort their listings so they could display the most relevant pages first. This was the start of a search engine versus webmaster game that continues to this day.

At first search engines were guided by the webmasters themselves. Early versions of search algorithms relied on webmaster-provided information such as category and keyword meta tags. Meta tags provided a guide to each page’s content. When some webmasters began to abuse meta tags, causing their pages to rank for irrelevant searches, search engines abandoned their consideration of Meta tags and instead developed more complex ranking algorithms, taking into account factors that were more diverse, including:

• Text within the title tag
• Domain name
• URL directories and file names
• HTML tags: headings, bold and emphasized text
• Keyword density
• Keyword proximity
• Alt attributes for images
• Text within NOFRAMES tags

By relying so extensively on factors that were still within the webmasters’ exclusive control, search engines continued to suffer from abuse and ranking manipulation. In order to provide better results to their users, search engines had to adapt to ensure their SERPs showed the most relevant search results, rather than useless pages stuffed with keywords by unscrupulous webmasters. This led to the rise of a new kind of search engine.

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Edo period advertising flyer from 1806 for a traditional medicine called Kinseitan

In ancient times the most common form of advertising was “word of mouth”. However, commercial messages and election campaign displays were found in the ruins of Pompeii. Egyptians used papyrus to create sales messages and wall posters. Lost-and-found advertising on papyrus was common in Greece and Rome. Wall or rock painting for commercial advertising is another manifestation of an ancient media advertising form which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America. For instance, tradition of wall paintings may be traced back to India rock-art paintings that goes back to 4000 BC, see Bhatia 2000: 62-68 on the evolution of wall advertising. As printing developed in the 15th and 16th century, advertising expanded to include handbills. In the 17th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England.

These early print ads were used mainly to promote books (which were increasingly affordable) and medicines (which were increasingly sought after as disease ravaged Europe). Quack ads became a problem, which ushered in regulation of advertising content.

As the economy was expanding during the 19th century, the need for advertising grew at the same pace. In America, the classified ads became popular, filling pages of newspapers with small print messages promoting all kinds of goods. The success of this advertising format led to the growth of mail-order advertising. In 1843 the first advertising agency was established by Volney Palmer in Philadelphia. At first the agencies were just brokers for ad space in newspapers, but by the 20th century, advertising agencies started to take over responsibility for the content as well.

The 1960s saw advertising transform into a modern, more scientific approach in which creativity was allowed to shine, producing unexpected messages that made advertisements interesting to read. The Volkswagen ad campaign featuring such headlines as “Think Small” and “Lemon” ushered in the era of modern advertising by promoting a “position” or “unique selling proposition” designed to associate each brand with a specific idea in the reader or viewer’s mind.

Today, advertising is evolving even further, with “guerrilla” promotions that involve unusual approaches such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars that are covered with brand messages, and interactive advertising where the viewer can respond to become part of the advertising message.

A print advertisement for the 1913 issue of the Encyclopædia Britannica

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Video: An advertising history…

Reuters - Telekom Austria’s Chief Executive Boris Nemsic will step down at the end of March to take the top job at Russia’s Vimpelcom, Austrian weekly profil reported in its online edition on Sunday.