Joost de Valk
To point out one or two changes would not do justice to what Google did last year. They changed so much of how SEO works that it left a lot of webmasters scrambling. We did a huge amount of reviews for websites that were hit by Panda and Penguin, and I have yet to find one single website that I think was undeserving of the slap it got. 3 or 4 huge banners above the fold? Seriously? Even if Google didn’t slap you for it, your users did. Buying links from crappy blog networks built entirely for the purpose of creating link equity? Seriously? I’ve done my bit of that too… in 2004. Not in 2010, 2011 or 2012. Nobody should.
Trond Lyngbø
There were several major shifts across the SEO industry in 2012. The biggest, in my view, was how Google cracked down on sites that took advantage of loopholes and weaknesses. Google has paved over most of the cracks, barricaded many open backdoors, and removed “low hanging fruit” approaches to gain easy and cheap SEO results.
They simultaneously introduced new things like Authorship and AuthorRank, which led to a significant change in the structure of SERPs. While SERPs are still cluttered with “noise” and good rankings are sometimes pushed down by things like Maps, it’s obvious that Google is tuning their filters pretty aggressively to defeat sites publishing low quality content.
Geir Ellefsen
Google made some big changes last year. We saw huge updates with Panda, Penguin and low quality EMD update. They updated their quality guidelines so there is no room for creative interpretations. It’s time to stop doing low quality link building and shallow content. All in all making SEO harder, which I think is a good thing 
Barry Schwartz
- Google’s Penguin update changing how link builders do their work
- Google’s Panda update still plagues SEOs on how to write and organize content on their sites. Yes, this is a 2011 change but there were many updates to it in 2012.
- Google also introduced the exact match domain algorithm, page layout algorithm and the DMCA algorithm where many many webmasters and SEOs saw their sites fall off the charts.
Ross Hudgens
Penguin was the biggest, most definitely. It completely changed the way almost everyone does SEO, link building, etc. In fact it even went about restructuring the way we THINK about terms like link building, and they now even have diminishing brand perception. The EMD update also did more of that as well – bringing pure “SEO” plays down in value. Today, if you don’t think about building a brand, you won’t build a ranking website.
Jon Cooper
By far the biggest change in 2012 was the fact that a lot of the most scalable link tactics were finally cracked down on by the big G. This also might be marked as the year Google goes after people scraping their data, first starting with those who are already taking some of their authorized data (i.e. Market Samurai & Raven Tools). I think this will continue until they’re supplying all the data, allowing them to charge as they wish.
Neil Patel
In 2012 the most important changes were how search engines viewed content and links. They are getting much smarter, in which it is harder to build unnatural links and write crappy content and achieve great rankings. And if you happen to get good rankings using those 2 methods… it won’t last for long.
The updates Google made this year with exact match domains, penguin and panda has placed even more emphasis on creating a good site and writing good content.
Bas van den Beld
2012 was full of changes off course, with Panda, Penguin and all the changes Google made to push Google+ and the thought behind that up to the recent decision by tools like Raven Tools to, under pressure from Google, decide to abandon ranking tracking all together. You can definitely say 2012 has been a noisy and busy year for SEO. The general consensus can be that SEO is growing up and is more than ‘just’ rankings and is more than ‘gaming’ the search engines. It is a trend which has been going on for a few years already but has really bolstered this year.
Marcus Tandler
SEOs finally had to realize that building exact match anchor text links is no viable SEO strategy anymore, and can even be harmful to sites if pushed too hard. SEO had to start looking beyond the algo and really provide engaging & compelling content to attract natural links and social mentions.
Jason Acidre
Penguin update was definitely the biggest game-changer of 2012, and that update somehow changed how people build links and gave way to the era of content marketing.
I’ve also observed that high-profile brands began to crowd the SERPs (in several competitive verticals) after the EMD update, wherein newly ranked pages from authoritative domains – in some ways – pay no attention to the actual relevance of its content to the targeted queries. I believe that this drift will still be improved on future algorithmic updates.
The disavow link feature on Google Webmaster tools may also have killed negative SEO and manipulative link bombing, though there are some areas that this feature might affect legit websites. It’s still something to watch out for in 2013.
Will Critchlow
I think we will look back on 2011 and 2012 as significant for the introduction of machine learned effects directly into the main organic ranking algorithm. We see the outcomes in both Panda and Penguin as well as more subtle updates like the top-heavy update. I think we will increasingly see the repercussions as even the engineers who built it don’t know exactly why certain parameters are set the way they are.
Aaron Wall
I think the biggest change in 2012 was the relentless focus on links. Links have of course played a role in SEO for over a decade, but if Panda was about policing junky content in 2011 then 2012 was about policing links. There were many pieces to it…
- tightening anchor text filters
- hitting blog link networks
- link warnings
- Penguin
- the disavow tool (& claiming that you are now responsible for policing the rest of the web off your site, even as Google makes little effort or investment to police all the spam on YouTube).
Andrew Knibbe
Without a doubt the biggest SEO changes in 2012 were related to the Google Panda updates. We saw a large number of sellers on the Flippa marketplace that had been hit hard – mostly due to the large volumes of backlinks that became devalued or other grey-hat techniques that the world’s largest search engine was no longer willing to tolerate. We could see the precise moment this happened in their Google Analytics traffic stats. Unfortunately the prices these sites sold for reflected these updates. On the other hand, websites that survived the Panda updates unscathed ended up selling for more.
Scott Polk
I would say that one of the biggest changes for SEO in 2012 was how Google evaluates links. Anchor Text is the one item that really sticks out for me. In 2011 we moved away from Exact Match Anchor Text towards using Brand and Call to Action and saw significant gains in rankings and direct traffic for clients. There are too many SEOs who simply cannot get away from the idea that “click here” and “more info” can pass more link equity than “Exact Match.” SEOs really need to start thinking about the web as an ecosystem and the links are the roots that connect everything together. Now that is not to say that “Exact Match Anchor Text” is dead, but it is on its death-bed.
Another honorable mention for 2012 is Google Authorship. This is a trust signal and when combined with a Google Plus Verified Name Account you have Trust with Google – this is huge.
AJ Kohn
I think the biggest change was the Penguin Update. It was important not just because it targeted certain link building techniques but because it was punitive in nature.
It was a powerful way for Google to change the mindset of site owners as they contemplate different strategies. Suddenly, the risk attached to these get-links-quick schemes became much higher. Between Panda (2011) and Penguin (2012), Google helped shape the industry’s current content marketing focus.
Other important changes were the true emergence of multi-screen search, the Knowledge Graph and continuing SERP diversity via context and personalization.
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