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Online marketing has changed a lot in the last seven years. But by how much? Google gives us a little insight today by opening up its index from 2001 in honor of its 10th birthday.

My favorite result so far is for “SEO”. You can click the image below for a better view.

In 2001, you get about 148,000 hits for “SEO”. In 2008, you get about 240,000,000 hits. That’s a 162062% increase!

Check out the differences in content, too. In 2001, not one result on page one referred to search engine optimization. Today, in 2008, every result and every ad on page one, excluding one for the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, related to search marketing. Also interesting: that nonprofit was the top result in 2001.

The historic search is fun and interesting to play with. Try it out and you just might uncover an insight into how our marketing, or even our culuture, has shifted in less than a decade.

About Adam T. Sutton

Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa
Adam generates content for MarketingSherpa's Email and Inbound Marketing newsletters. His years of experience in interviewing marketers and conveying their insights has spanned topics such as search marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, email and more. Adam previously powered the content behind MarketingSherpa's Search and Consumer-marketing newsletters and carries that experience into his new role. Today, in addition to writing articles, he contributes content to the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa blogs, as well as MECLABS webinars, workshops and summits.

Prior to joining MarketingSherpa, Adam was the Managing Editor at the Mequoda group. There he created content and promotions for the company's daily email newsletter and managed its schedule.

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Categories: Search Marketing Tags: Google, search, SEO