According to Danny Sullivan, the term "search engine optimization" was first used on 26 July 1997 by a spam message posted on Usenet. In the period of the search engine algorithms is not too complex so easily manipulated.

Early versions of search algorithms based solely on information provided by the webmaster through the meta tags in html code their web sites. Meta tags provide information about the content on a web page with a series of keywords (keyword). Some webmasters to manipulate the way down the keyword does not match the real site's content, so the search engine and put the wrong memeringkat site. This causes search results to be inaccurate and cause losses to both search engines and for users who expect the relevant information and quality.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two doctoral students in computer science from Stanford University, tried to overcome the problems with the build BackRub, a search engine that fully rely on mathematical algorithms to memeringkat web page. These algorithms, called PageRank, is a mathematical function of the value of a complex combination of calculation from the number of links that lead to a web page with the analysis on the weight of each link, with a scale of 1-10. Based on the principle of PageRank, in general, can be said that the web pages that have a high ranking web pages is that many in-links by another web page. PageRank value will also be high when the web page that lead to him also has a high ranking. So the value of a link from the site such as Yahoo! worth more than the combined value of one hundred links from a web site that is not known.

BackRub is just a fetus. In 1998 Page and Brin founded Google, which is the version of "adult" from BackRub. In a short period of time Google's reputation and gain trust from the public Internet because the user presents the successful results, which are relatively clean (not manipulated), fast, and relevant. PageRank directly into the system both for standard search engine for webmasters and others who work to make sure the website gain PageRank value possible so that the highest position on the search results.