Some search engines have also begun to engage with the SEO industry and often sponsor and attend SEO conferences, web chats, and seminars. The major search engines provide information and guides to helpWebsite optimization . Google has a Sitemaps program that helps webmasters understand if Google is having any problems indexing their site, and provides data about Google's traffic to the site. Bing Webmaster Tools provides a way for webmasters to submit sitemaps and web feeds, allows users to determine "crawl rates," and track page indexing status.
In 2015, reports emerged that Google was developing and promoting mobile search as a key feature of future products. In response, many brands began to adopt different Internet marketing strategies.
In 1998, two Stanford graduate students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed "Backrub," a search engine that relied on a mathematical algorithm to assess the importance of web pages. The algorithm calculated a number, PageRank, that was a function of the number and strength of inbound links. PageRank estimated the likelihood that a web user who randomly browsed the web and followed links from one page to another would arrive at a particular page. In practice, this meant that some links were stronger than others, as pages with higher PageRank values were more likely to be visited by a random web browser.
Page and Brin founded Google in 1998. Google has attracted a loyal following among a growing number of Internet users who like its simple design. In addition to considering on-page factors such as keyword frequency, meta tags, titles, links, and site structure, Google also considers off-page factors such as PageRank and hyperlink analysis, allowing Google to avoid the kind of marketing list manipulation common in search engines that only consider on-page factors for ranking. Although PageRank is more difficult to manipulate, webmasters have developed link building tools and schemes to influence the Inktomi search engine, and these methods are also applicable to manipulating PageRank. Many websites focus on exchanging, buying, and selling links, and are often on a very large scale. Some of these schemes, or link farms, involve the creation of thousands of websites with the sole purpose of sending link spam.