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Site owners started to recognize the value of having their sites highly ranked and visible in search engine results, creating an opportunity for both [[white hat]] and [[black hat]] SEO practitioners. According to industry analyst [[Danny Sullivan (technologist)|Danny Sullivan]], the phrase "search engine optimization" probably came into use in 1997.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showpost.php?p=2119&postcount=10|title=Who Invented the Term "Search Engine Optimization"?|author=Danny Sullivan|publisher=[[Search Engine Watch]]|date=June 14, 2004|accessdate=2007-05-14}} See [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.current-events.net-abuse.spam/browse_thread/thread/6fee2777dc17b8ab/3858bff94e56aff3?lnk=st&q=%22search+engine+optimization%22&rnum=1#3858bff94e56aff3 Google groups thread].</ref> The first documented use of the term Search Engine Optimization was [http://www.thehistoryofseo.com/seo-interviews/john-audette/ John Audette] and his company Multimedia Marketing Group as documented by a web page from the MMG site from August, 1997. <ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.mmgco.com/campaign.html (Document Number 19970801004204)| title=Documentation of Who Invented SEO at the Internet Way Back Machine | source=Internet Way Back Machine |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/web/19970801004204/www.mmgco.com/campaign.html (Document Number 19970801004204) |archivedate=1997-08-01}}</ref>
Early versions of search [[algorithm]]s relied on webmaster-provided information such as the keyword [[meta tag]], or index files in engines like [[Aliweb|ALIWEB]]. Meta tags provide a guide to each page's content. Using meta data to index pages was found to be less than reliable, however, because the webmaster's choice of keywords in the meta tag could potentially be an inaccurate representation of the site's actual content. Inaccurate, incomplete, and inconsistent data in meta tags could and did cause pages to rank for irrelevant searches.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/metacrap.htm|title=Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia|author=[[Cory Doctorow]]|date=August 26, 2001|publisher=e-LearningGuru|accessdate=2007-05-08 |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20070409062313/http://www.e-learningguru.com/articles/metacrap.htm |archivedate = 2007-04-09}}</ref> Web content providers also manipulated a number of attributes within the HTML source of a page in an attempt to rank well in search engines.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~lloyd/tilde/InterNet/Search/1998_WWW7.html|title=What is a tall poppy among web pages?|month=April | year=1998|publisher=Proc. 7th Int. World Wide Web Conference|accessdate=2007-05-08|author=Pringle, G., Allison, L., and Dowe, D.}}</ref>
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