Google Algorithm update 2004 sets efficiency of the search engine a bit higher. The updates in 2004 include Austin and Brandy Update only. Google stopped its big monthly monolithic index updates with the Esmeralda [June 2003 update] and started working on polylithic day to day index update.
Austin Update: [January 2004 google algorithm update ]
Following Florida [November 2003 update], Austin made google smarter and better. The Hilltop Algorithm combined with Page rank algorithm of google was the main game changer. [Google acquired Hilltop Algorithm in February 2003]. At the initial stage, not all keywords gave perfect results. Google started fine tuning and a few weeks later, the efficiency of google search increased!
Brandy Update: [February 2004 google algorithm update ]
• The keyword analysis picked up the next phase in Brandy Update. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) was introduced.
Significance of LSI:
LSI deals with closed semantic match that puts makes google realize the topic and concept of your web page.
The main course of action was synonyms! Implying that close analysis of words other than keywords were performed. When the content excluding the keyword was relevant to the keyword, the web page gets preferred.
For example, let’s take speak about ‘Review of novels’. Here, LSI looks for words or links relevant to the plot, story, author, awards etc.. If relevant, greater the chance of showing up in SERP.
• ‘Neighborhood’ was given complete focus!
The concept of ‘buying backlinks’ – a spam act according to google got a few chance for survival. The term ‘Neighborhood’ refers to links from another webpage that links to your website. Google started penalizing websites that had backlinks from irrelevant sources. Thus, making the search engine more efficient and appealing to users.
• Synonyms were given a priority!
Instead of using the focus keyword everywhere, google started analyzing for its synonym as keywords. Good title tags are said to have synonyms instead of focus keyword. Also, avoiding repetition of focus keyword was a changelog.
Google IPO: [August 2004 – not algorithm update]
On August 19, 2004, Google sold 22.5M shares at $80 each in the IPO. Google had the aim to raise $2,718,281,828 via public funding and failed to achieve the goal. The failure can be said as a mere bad luck, but the share value bounced to more than twice. At the end google set their market value at $20 billion.