Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, posted that Google's core advice around how to rank well in Google Search has not changed in two decades. Google showed a screenshot of its advice from 2002 where it wrote, "Make pages for users, not for search engines."
That is the same advice Google is providing today in its creating helpful content documentation.
Google wrote, ""Make pages for users, not for search engines." -- Google, 2002. Our good advice then remains the same over two decades later. To succeed in Google Search, focus on people-first content."
Here is the screenshot from 2002:
Here is a screenshot from now, two decades later:
Me, being me, I asked if this is a sign that something is brewing - since we see insane volatility but yet Google has not confirmed an update yet.
Danny Sullivan replied to me, saying, "Just good advice that's worth sharing. Was also recently trying to track down the first time we talked about create for people, not search rankings, and 2002 seems to be it. I suspect it was even before then, though." He added, "Also sometimes people think advice for succeeding well in Google changes all the time and, well, this is the core advice that hasn't changed for over two decades."
Here are those tweets:
something brewing????
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) July 6, 2023
Also sometimes people think advice for succeeding well in Google changes all the time and, well, this is the core advice that hasn't changed for over two decades :)
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) July 6, 2023
Forum discussion at Twitter.
