Bourbon update (2005): what changed and what it means now

What Google changed#

Google never published a blog post about Bourbon, but it did acknowledge the update. In early June 2005, a Google employee who posted on WebmasterWorld as GoogleGuy described it in detail. John Battelle quoted him on 1 June 2005: “Bourbon includes something like 3.5 improvements in search quality, and I believe that only a couple are out so far.”

GoogleGuy did not say what each improvement did. A week later, as Search Engine Roundtable reported, he said a binary push had gone out with “hooks for the last part of Bourbon,” alongside reinclusions and responses to spam complaints.

Google never named it; Bourbon is a name the SEO industry adopted, from the WebmasterWorld threads that tracked the update.

When it rolled out#

Google stated no start date. WebmasterWorld members were already tracking shifts in the Update Bourbon thread on 20 May 2005, so this page uses that date; the exact day is approximate. On 1 June, GoogleGuy said the last major change “should roll out over the next week or so,” with minor changes after that. Google gave no completion date.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no impact figures. GoogleGuy’s advice was to take a break from checking rankings for several days while the stages rolled out. Webmasters at the time speculated that Bourbon changed how Google handled duplicate content and non-canonical URLs, such as www and non-www versions of the same page. Google never confirmed that, so treat it as industry theory.

What site owners should do#

Bourbon itself is history. If the duplicate URL theories apply to your site, Google’s current canonicalization guidance is the place to start. It says canonicalization is “the process of selecting the representative” URL for duplicate content, and that some duplicate content is normal and not a spam violation.

• Pick one preferred version of each URL and redirect or canonicalize the others to it.
• Keep internal links pointing at the preferred URL.
• Focus on content made for people, as Google’s helpful content guidance recommends.

How to check whether it affected you#

This is a historical question. Search Console keeps 16 months of data and did not exist in 2005, so the only evidence would be server logs or analytics archives from May and June 2005. For anything recent, the Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists every update with its dates, so you can check what rolled out when.

Related updates#

• The Austin update was the previous widely tracked ranking change, in 2004.
• The Jagger update followed in October 2005, again announced through forum and blog posts.
• The Big Daddy update later brought Google’s own promise of improved canonicalization.