Perth SEO agency publishes 37-update Google timeline

By AI, Created 7:26 AM UTC, May 29, 2026, /AGP/ – The SEO Company has released an annotated timeline of 37 major Google algorithm updates from 1998 to 2026, built from nearly two decades of work on Australian websites. The retrospective highlights how update timing and impact often differed in Australia, and why AI search is changing what SEO success looks like.

Why it matters: - The timeline gives Australian businesses a local view of Google algorithm history instead of relying on US-centric search commentary. - The retrospective shows how major updates affected .com.au sites differently, including rollout timing, legacy site issues, and traffic loss from AI Overviews. - The release also signals a shift in SEO priorities as AI-generated answers become a new source of visibility.

What happened: - The SEO Company marked its 19th year in business by publishing a free editorial-journal retrospective on every major Google algorithm update from 1998 to 2026. - The agency says the timeline covers 37 confirmed major Google updates and includes first-hand observations from SEO work on Australian websites since 2007. - The retrospective groups the updates into five eras: pre-Panda, penalty, semantic, quality, and AI. - Twelve milestones include PageRank, Florida, Panda, Penguin, Hummingbird, Mobilegeddon, Medic, BERT, Core Web Vitals, the Helpful Content Update, AI Overviews, and AI Mode.

The details: - The SEO Company says most Google algorithm histories were written by US publications watching US search results. - Australian search results moved on different timing for several updates, including Mobilegeddon in 2015. - Mobilegeddon hit harder in Australia because more local trade and small-business sites still used non-responsive themes. - The Australian local SEO market was less spammy during Penguin and the 2012 Exact Match Domain update, so genuine small businesses were less affected. - In 2024, AI Overviews reduced traffic to source pages by 30% to 40% on the worst-affected sites in The SEO Company’s book of work. - Oliver Wood, founder and managing director of The SEO Company, said the team has watched every update change what it tells clients and wanted to create the document it needed when explaining Mobilegeddon to a Perth retailer. - The agency says it is consistently rated among Perth’s top-rated SEO agencies on Google reviews, with a 4.7 out of 5 average across 142 verified reviews. - The SEO Company says it has managed more than AUD 1.14 billion in advertising spend over its 19-year history. - Its services include technical SEO, content strategy, local SEO, and AI search visibility. - The retrospective is the second long-form piece in the agency’s editorial journal, which launched earlier in 2026. - The journal serves clients in Perth and across Australia. - More information is available at the company’s announcement.

Between the lines: - The update history is also a positioning play for an agency built in the pre-AI search era. - Wood’s comments frame SEO as moving away from chasing rankings in standard results and toward earning citations in AI Overviews, Google’s AI Mode, and other generative answer engines. - The pattern across Google updates, as Wood describes it, is that shortcuts keep getting removed while original work becomes more valuable.

What’s next: - The SEO Company expects AI-era search features to keep changing how businesses measure visibility and traffic. - The agency’s editorial journal is likely to remain part of how it explains those changes to clients in Perth and nationally.

The bottom line: - The retrospective turns nearly two decades of Australian SEO experience into a local guide to Google’s biggest changes, with AI search now emerging as the next major battleground.