A History of Listicles, Specifically in the SEO/GEO Space: A Hamsterdam History Lesson

By Ethan Lazuk

Welcome to another edition of Hamsterdam History!

This is a series of posts where we look at “vintage” SEO articles to celebrate their contributors, gain historical knowledge, and discuss how things have changed (or haven’t) since.

In this edition, we’re looking at the history of listicles.

This was inspired by a post I was reviewing from October 5, 2007 by Eric Lander for Search Engine Journal called “The Necessary Evolution of Linkbait.”

Linkbait is content that users would naturally want to link to because it offers unique value. It’s a form of link-building for SEO/GEO.

In the article, Eric discusses how linkbait tactics had gotten spammy:

“Similarly, the more linkbait is tried, the more tiring unoriginal ideas become.

Whether you see top ten lists, quizzes, contests or fake awards being handed out — the Internet (and more specificly, the blogosphere) has become a dumpster of tired linkbait techniques that never quite produce.

If you don’t think this is true, log into your RSS reader and just do a quick search for “top 10″, “contest” or “list”. Even with a small set of subscriptions you’ll be inundated with results. That’s no fluke.”

It’s the “top ten lists” that got my attention.

My mind immediately went to self-promotional listicles for GEO strategies.

Nearly every other day, I see some mention of self-promotional listicles. This was today:

Saw a list of top growth marketers on LinkedIn where the number one person on the list was the list creator. I hope that listicle strategy works for that person's AEO.

— Eli Schwartz (@5le) August 17, 2026

If you’re unfamiliar with the topic, I encourage you to search on Google for “self-promotional listicles GEO risks and rewards” and read some of what the industry has written, such as the risk that these listicles may give you a citation but the AI assistants may end up mentioning your competitors instead of you.

We’ve also seen ChatGPT take steps recently to move away from citing spammy pages (like self-promotional listicles) by incorporating more “site:” and “official” modifiers into its fanout queries.

But what I want to talk about is the history of listicles. Where does this idea come from?

TLDR: We could draw a conceptual line for the history of lists/listicles: Clay tablet > printed list > magazine ranking > web listicle > featured snippet > AI-generated answer.

Lists are nearly as old as writing itself.

Some of the earliest surviving written texts from ancient Mesopotamia were administrative lists.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art notes that one early text from Uruk lists 120 officials and occupations.

In other words, lists aren’t simply a stylistic preference; they’re one of humanity’s oldest methods of information architecture.

Early “listicles” existed by at least the 1500s.

In a 1592 pamphlet, Nashe describes eight kinds of drunkards, separating them into recognizable types and explaining each one.

His work still gets quoted in modern-day listicles.

Viral “listicles” existed by the 1800s.

The Smithsonian has a cool article called “There Were Listicles That Went Viral Long Before There Was an Internet.”

One of these was “The Fate of the Apostles,” essentially a list explaining how Jesus’s apostles supposedly died that researchers found versions in at least 110 publications.

Another was “Age of Animals,” which listed the supposed lifespans of different animals.

Ranking culture was normalized by 20th-century media.

Billboard published its first chart ranking record sales in 1940.

Then in 1977, “The Book of Lists” was published, featuring 521 pages of lists covering trivia, history, culture, crime, names, sports, and other topics. The Atlantic has even argued that this book anticipated internet list culture.

Then came David Letterman’s “Top Ten List,” which debuted in 1985 and was another influential list format.

By the late 20th century, ordered lists were already deeply embedded in publishing and popular culture.

Then came the internet.

In 1997, Jakob Nielsen’s research into how people read webpages found that 79% of test users scanned new webpages rather than reading them word by word.

Nielsen thus recommended having meaningful headings, highlighted keywords, short paragraphs, and bulleted lists.

But the word “listicle” is fairly recent.

Merriam-Webster records the first known use of the word “listicle” in 2007, where the term is simply a blend of “list” and “article.”

Then came Buzzfeed and social media.

While BuzzFeed didn’t invent the listicle, it helped turn the format into a defining feature of the social web.

Founded in 2006, BuzzFeed initially focused less on search traffic and more on creating content people wanted to share across social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Numbered headlines worked well, namely because they wouldn’t take much effort to consume.

Thus, there was a listicle boom in the early 2010s driven largely by social sharing and viral publishing, rather than SEO.

Then SEO absorbed the listicle.

We should distinguish between “search listicles” and the precursor, “social listicles.”

We saw Eric talking about search listicles as spammy linkbait back in 2007. But listicles also had value for organic search traffic.

Of course, the format would evolve from more social topics, like “27 Signs You Grew Up in the 1990s,” to more search-focused topics, like “10 Best Running Shoes for Beginners.”

The listicle tactic worked well for SEO because some popular search queries naturally signify an intent served by that format of content:

• best X
• top X
• types of X
• examples of X
• ways to X
• X vs. Y
• things to do in X

Google’s search interfaces also evolved in a way that helped listicle-style content with featured snippets (as well as passage ranking) that could identify sections of the listicle as relevant to a query.

That isn’t to say Google rewarded listicles specifically. Only that the format naturally divides a broad subject into semantically distinct passages.

This is also why listicles work(ed) well for GEO.

Fanout queries fan the flames of listicles.

With the advent of fanout queries, listicles provided a way to be relevant to multiple queries simultaneously. This can arguably give the content an advantage when it comes to being chosen for citations and summaries.

An AI assistant answering “How should a small plumbing business improve its visibility in Google and AI search?” might fan out into several related questions and retrieve different portions of the same article. That makes individual list items more relevant.

A 2026 study of citation influence across ChatGPT, Google, and Perplexity reported that high-influence sources tended to be more structured and contain extractable evidence, such as definitions, numerical facts, and comparisons. The type of passages listicles are designed to provide.

This isn’t to say that AI assistants would or should prefer listicles. Rather, lists create a convenient container for extractable information.

That inspired a whole cottage industry of self-promotional listicles.

Of course, like with anything in SEO/GEO, when a tactic gets abused, the search engines and AI assistants start to fight back. And we’re seeing that, potentially, with the waning relevance of listicles today.

Takeaways

Lists date back nearly as far as writing itself.

As for the “listicle,” it’s survived every major change in information distribution. But could that legacy be waning today?

Lists solve a problem that never really changes: breaking complicated information into pieces that are easier to understand.

So continue to use lists in your content. They’re great for readers. As far as listicles, the same spammy characteristics that made them bad linkbait in 2007 may be catching up with them again in 2026.

Google even gives the example of “7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers” as commodity content in its “Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search” documentation.

That’s not to say you can’t have good strategies for listicles, where the content is truly objective, helpful, and original. I’d argue that such content will endure the tests of time and be relevant for millennia to come.

Outro

I hope you’ve enjoyed this edition of Hamsterdam History!

Stay tuned for another edition soon, or check out related history articles below.

Until next time, enjoy the vibes:

Thanks for reading. Happy optimizing!

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