At this time was when many of the pioneers of internet development and "optimization" were makes the first strides at creating a viable search engine so that the birth of SEO goes hand in hand with the birth of the search engine.



In 1990, university student Alan Emtage's search system Archie was introduced and followed by Gopher. Three years, later, the development of search engines was well underway with Mathew Gray's World Wide Web Wanderer. By 1994, modern search engines emerged with the appearance of Lycos, Galaxy and Yahoo. At every step, some form of SEO was tagging along, but it wasn't until 1994 that many companies were beginning to experiment with different techniques of search engine optimization as search engines were becoming the backbone of online traffic and advertisement.

These early attempts could be summarized by the usage of the submission process as the sole criteria for search engine placement. Yet, this very narrow emphasis was quickly abandoned once automated programs were developed to submit material on the web.

It was at this same time that spam first appeared. Many of the webmasters realized very quickly at the time that they could manipulate the early search engine parameters simply by inundating the search results pages by over-submission of duplicate content.

Early on, Yahoo, more than many other search engines, began to use SEO techniques but multiple providers followed suit. The growth of the SEO industry was largely unforeseen at the time. In a short time, independent optimizers and search engines began a competitive relationship that remains strong even today. The gist of this contest was based upon the development of newer and better ranking techniques as the responses of search engine to these approaches through the creation of new algorithms.

The webmaster of the major search engines understood in short order that SEO consultancy was not a fleeting idea. Thus, a general acceptance of search engine optimization resulted, although the extent of this varied from one search engine to another.

They understood well that in order to keep their indexes relevant and useful that they would have to form alliances with SEO companies. Outside of the established businesses that operated SEO services, many more entrepreneurs began to compile and distribute do-it-yourself SEO programs. This has continued to expand and diversify the entire realm of search engine optimization, making it a big money-maker.