How many times have you read that SEO is dead? Every time Google or technology writes a new page, the ritual obituary arrives on time.
In the musical field, Billy Idol has never had any doubts: “Punk will never die. It’s a matter of attitude.” The same goes for SEO. The one that works reacts, contaminates itself, evolves, never freezes. Those who remain stationary become extinct and will be like an old vinyl record that longer listened by anyone. Those who update themselves become immortal like a song by the Ramones or the Sex Pistols.
1997: The Age of Algorithms
With the coming of the first algorithms, search engines ceased to be simple amateur catalogs and became complex systems capable of selecting and sorting billions of pages. And the first alarm immediately went off: “Now SEO is dead, you won’t need to build a website anymore!”
Instead, it was precisely from the need to respond to these algorithms that true SEO was born. First date. At the base study, testing and constant experimentation to understand what robots like. Those who improvised were paved, those who started to build their track managed to climb the rankings.
The takeaway? SEO came to life just when everyone was signing its funeral.
2000: PageRank and the birth of link building
Google revolutionized search with PageRank, an algorithm that evaluates the authority of a page based on the links it receives from other websites. Many thought that from that moment on it would be impossible to affect the SERPs again: “Goodbye SEO, now only the authority of the links counts”.
In fact, a new subgenre of SEO was born, link building. Come Out and Play. Established techniques were enhanced with the construction of networks and strategic connections.
Reputation became the real leitmotif, the new yardstick by which Google decided who climbed the ranking.
2006: the boom of Social Media
The social media boom radically changed online habits. And here are the big headlines in the newspapers: “Goodbye Google, now we search for everything on Facebook, YouTube and co”.
Web became noisier, but organic search remained critical to finding information and products online. Know your enemy. SEO began to challenge the competition, integrating, getting its hands dirty with cross-media content and finding new fanbases between posts, forums and videos.
SEO was not undermined by social media, but was enriched, contaminated, transformed and became something more powerful and articulated, capable of dialoguing with new languages and new digital audiences.
2011: Google Panda and cleaning up in Serp
Google launched the Panda algorithm to clean up keyword factories and junk content that infested the web. And, as often happens in these situations, terror was unleashed among the SEOs of the old guard: “Google’s axe has fallen on SEO and online content!”.
Instead, what came was nothing more than natural selection. Rise above. SEOs that were proliferating thanks to incorrect techniques were penalized and those who focused on quality, originality and user experience were rewarded.
Value, originality, user experience became new ranking factors. Keywords remained important, but now they had to be thought of and read as part of a path that creates real value for those who browse. Google Panda has therefore led to the awakening of a more authentic, more powerful, more human SEO.
2015: RankBrain and users’ intentions
RankBrain marked another evolutionary leap for Google. It is no longer enough to look at the individual words lined up, but it is a matter of understanding
But the truth is different. Google has raised the bar in the name of quality, aiming to provide a better and more relevant experience. Know your product. It has become even more important to understand the real intent of people searching for information online and respond appropriately.
RankBrain has taken SEO to a new level, an intelligent dialogue that is established with the user, in which deep understanding makes the difference.
2020: Google Bert and zero-click answers
With the Google Bert algorithm and the growth of voice searches, the SERPs have been filled with snippets, information boxes and direct answers (zero-clicks). Discouragement hovered among the SEO communities: “No one clicks on the results anymore, SEO is out, guys!”.
In reality, SEO was simply raising the bar of the game. It was no longer important to be just found, but it was necessary to respond, emerge and conquer even those who do not click.
Grazie a Google Bert, la Seo è diventata ancora più raffinata, capace di intercettare l’intenzione reale, rispondere meglio e rimanere protagonista anche nelle SERP che sembrano non lasciare spazio ai vecchi schemi.
2022: ChatGPT and artificial intelligence
The coming of ChatGPT and GenAI was like a heavy bass turn: “AIs answer everything, goodbye SEO, goodbye and thank you!”.
But, if we analyze the functioning of ChatGPT and other platforms well, we can clearly understand that artificial intelligence needs optimized content, fresh websites, credible sources from which to draw. Before I Forget. These are the SEO best practices that we have been repeating for years. And the AIs themselves feed on content and information from search engines such as Google or Bing.
Today, an SEO must continue the good work of previous years, keeping up to date on the functioning of AI and new funnels. The results of good work can be even more explosive.
2024: AI Overviews, la mossa di Google
In the battle of AI, Google’s riff has been to place its Gemini-based AI Overviews at the top of the SERP. Many definitively mourn SEO: “If Google responds directly with AI, websites no longer make sense to exist”.
What changes is only the stage. Now we need to stand out even in automatic AI summaries, to be found as a reliable source, to shine even without obvious clicks. My Way. The rules change, the spirit remains.
SEO continues to exist, but it must change perspective. Visibility is not measured only in clicks to the website.
2025: June Core Update, the evolution continues
2025 June Core Update has given a further squeeze on the rules of the game, pushing Google to reward even more authentic, higher quality content and truly authoritative sources. This is yet another Google udate that brought panic in the industry, in addition to the massive deindexing of non-compliant pages. And every time it happens, the usual sentence pops up: “SEO is dead”.
As always, those who invest in real value, user experience and continuous updating continue to achieve results, while strategies that focus on low quality, shortcuts and outdated practices are penalized. Welcome to the jungle. The secret is to adapt and not focus on some trick that will be short-lived.
Punk evolved, gave birth to new musical genres and left us with iconic songs that we still sing today. In the same way, SEO continues to live, adapting to the new reality of the web and emerging technologies. It’s all a matter of attitude and the SEO expert is a punk rocker, a rebel who tries to unhinge algorithms, but lives on the vibrations that his audience gives him.
Seo is alive and it’s more punk than ever!
