- Jun 1, 2018
- 518
- 2,948
This week 13 years ago the domain BlackHatWorld.com was registered. That’s right, this forum first graced browsers in 2006, and has been feeding ideas and starting conversations ever since. 13 is the minimum age for contributing to forums, so now that BHW is officially old enough to post on the forum itself, we thought we’d take this opportunity to look back on the last 13 years of the IM and tech industries.
Disclaimer: This thread wouldn’t have been possible without Moz’s in-depth catalogue of Google’s algorithm changes, which goes all the way back to 2000, plus the handy timeline put together by computerhistory.org.
To begin, let’s cast our minds back to 2006.
The Nintendo Wii had just been launched, Anonymous was only a couple of years old, and MySpace was still going strong (do you remember who was in your top 8?). The world of IM was very different back then, but the heady days of link farms and the wild west of spam were already waning. Google had rolled out a handful of updates by now and was ramping up to make life difficult for IMs everywhere.
That’s where BlackHatWorld came in. Try what Google may, there were still ways to game them, and BHW was the place to talk them through, see what worked and keep ahead of the curve. Although a lot has changed in the last 13 years, finding loopholes and working the system are still the things that get us out of bed in the morning.
Since then we’ve seen the launch of the first iPhone and the death of the 10-listing SERP in 2007, both of which are still changing IM in ways we haven’t seen the end of! There have been even more devices coming onto the scene, with the MacBook Air in 2008 and the iPad in 2010, not to mention the first Bitcoins mined in 2009 and the development of HTML5 in 2014. All of which have had their own impact on our world, and will no doubt continue to play a part in years to come.
Then came the big guns that really made some changes. Panda in 2011, Penguin in 2012, and Rankbrain in 2015 - Google was really on a roll now. Panda had a vendetta against bad content, Penguin took on the fight against spam, and RankBrain brought machine learning onto the scene. IM was officially shaken up and we all had to knuckle down if we wanted to keep up with the game.
But the twists and turns didn’t end there. “Fred” dragged on through 2017, and Medic hit just last year, so it seems Google will forever be keeping us on our toes.
That’s why BlackHatWorld is still here, finding ways to give Google the finger no matter what they throw at us, and it’s why this forum will continue to play the game, no matter how many times the rules change and the stakes raise.
What changes have made the biggest impact on your IM journey in the last 13 years?
Disclaimer: This thread wouldn’t have been possible without Moz’s in-depth catalogue of Google’s algorithm changes, which goes all the way back to 2000, plus the handy timeline put together by computerhistory.org.
To begin, let’s cast our minds back to 2006.
The Nintendo Wii had just been launched, Anonymous was only a couple of years old, and MySpace was still going strong (do you remember who was in your top 8?). The world of IM was very different back then, but the heady days of link farms and the wild west of spam were already waning. Google had rolled out a handful of updates by now and was ramping up to make life difficult for IMs everywhere.
That’s where BlackHatWorld came in. Try what Google may, there were still ways to game them, and BHW was the place to talk them through, see what worked and keep ahead of the curve. Although a lot has changed in the last 13 years, finding loopholes and working the system are still the things that get us out of bed in the morning.
Since then we’ve seen the launch of the first iPhone and the death of the 10-listing SERP in 2007, both of which are still changing IM in ways we haven’t seen the end of! There have been even more devices coming onto the scene, with the MacBook Air in 2008 and the iPad in 2010, not to mention the first Bitcoins mined in 2009 and the development of HTML5 in 2014. All of which have had their own impact on our world, and will no doubt continue to play a part in years to come.
Then came the big guns that really made some changes. Panda in 2011, Penguin in 2012, and Rankbrain in 2015 - Google was really on a roll now. Panda had a vendetta against bad content, Penguin took on the fight against spam, and RankBrain brought machine learning onto the scene. IM was officially shaken up and we all had to knuckle down if we wanted to keep up with the game.
But the twists and turns didn’t end there. “Fred” dragged on through 2017, and Medic hit just last year, so it seems Google will forever be keeping us on our toes.
That’s why BlackHatWorld is still here, finding ways to give Google the finger no matter what they throw at us, and it’s why this forum will continue to play the game, no matter how many times the rules change and the stakes raise.
What changes have made the biggest impact on your IM journey in the last 13 years?
.. well ..I am still an idiot but ..um.. offtopic..). I still remember how I got my first Jr. VIP sub by doing someone's work and getting paid with Jr VIP sub in exchange. I would be banned if it was today lol. 
