The History of Search Engines

Modern search engines are pretty incredible – complex algorithms enable search engines to take your search query and return results that are usually quite accurate, presenting you with valuable information nuggets amidst a vast information data mine.

Search engines have come a long way since their early prototypes, as our Internet Search Engines History infographic illustrates. From improvements in web crawlers and categorizing and indexing the web, to introducing new protocols such as robots.txt so that webmasters have control over what web pages get crawled, to the introduction of voice search, the development of search engines has been the culmination of multiple search technologies that developed from different search engines. Alta Vista was the first search engine to process natural language queries; Lycos started strong with a system categorizing relevance signals, matching keywords with prefixes and word proximity; and Ask Jeeves introduced the use of human editors to match actual user search queries.

How Do Search Engines Work?

First of all, let’s ask what is a search engine? A search engine is a program that searches the web for sites based on your keyword search terms. The search engine takes your keyword and returns search engine results pages (SERP), with a list of sites it deems relevant or connected to your searched keyword.

The goal for many sites is to appear in the first SERP for the most popular keywords related to their business. A site’s keyword ranking is very important because the higher a site ranks in the SERP, the more people will see it.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is the method used to increase the likelihood of obtaining a first page ranking through techniques such as link building, SEO title tags, content optimization, meta description, and keyword research.

Google search engines and other major search engines like Bing and Yahoo use large, numerous computers in order to search through the large quantities of data across the web.

Web search engines catalog the world wide web by using a spider, or web crawler. These web-crawling robots were created for indexing content; they scan and assess the content on site pages and information archives across the web.

Algorithms and Determining the Best Search Engines

Different internet search engines use different algorithms for determining which web pages are the most relevant for a particular search engine keyword, and which web pages should appear at the top of the search engine results page.

Relevancy is the key for online search engines – users naturally prefer a search engine that will give them the best and most relevant results.

Search engines are often quite guarded with their search algorithms, since their unique algorithm is trying to generate the most relevant results. The best search engines, and often the most popular search engines as a result, are the ones that are the most relevant.

Search Engine History

Search engine history all started in 1990 with Archie, an FTP site hosting an index of downloadable directory listings. Search engines continued to be primitive directory listings, until search engines developed to crawling and indexing websites, eventually creating algorithms to optimize relevancy.

Yahoo started off as just a list of favorite websites, eventually growing large enough to become a searchable index directory. They actually had their search services outsourced until 2002, when they started to really work on their search engine.

History of Google Search Engine

Google’s unique and improving algorithm has made it one of the most popular search engines of all time. Other search engines continue to have a difficult time matching the relevancy algorithm Google has created by examining a number of factors such as social media, inbound links, fresh content, etc.

As evidenced by the above infographic, Google appeared on the search engine scene in 1996. Google was unique because it ranked pages according to citation notation, in which a mention of one site on a different website became a vote in that site’s favor.

Google also began judging sites by authority. A website’s authority, or trustworthiness, was determined by how many other websites were linking to it, and how reliable those outside linking sites were.

Google search history can be witnessed by taking a look at Google’s homepage progressions over the years. It’s remarkable to see how basic and primitive the now most popular search engine once was.

Google Search Engine History: Looking In To the Past

A picture of the original 1997 Google search engine homepage, back when Google was part of stanford.edu.

Google search engine homepage in 2005

Google’s current look.

List of Alternative Search Engines

While Google is widely regarded as the most popular search engine, there are also a number of alternative search engines one can use.

Different search engines exist for unique needs. For example, you may want a search engine to help you search for blogs specifically, or perhaps you want search engines for kids that only return sites appropriate for children.

Here is a list of search engines that cater to particular interests:

• BlogSearchEngine is a great blog search engine
• Indeed and Monster are job search engines
• SongMeanings and LyricsMode are search engines for music lyrics

These free search engines enable you to easily find information that caters to your unique needs.

Deep Web Search Engines

In addition to standard search engines, there are deep web search engines as well.

The deep web refers to areas of the internet that are not susceptible to normal indexing, and so can’t easily be found and indexed by crawlers. These alternative search engines specialize in this not-easy-to-find data.

• Yippy is a popular deep web search engine, especially useful for niches and obscure interests
• Deep Dyve is a deep web search engine for scholarly articles and journals

Top 10 Search Engines

Below is our top 10 internet search engines list. While deciding which is the “best” search engine depends on your unique wants and needs, below is a list of popular search engines, some more unique than others.

• Google – Offering everything from image searches, map searches, news searches, etc. With impressive keyword relevancy and a continuously improving search algorithm, it’s easy to see why Google is still the reigning champ.
• Bing – The Microsoft powered search engine prides itself on being a “decision engine” by offering search suggestions on the side column and providing extra search options.
• Yahoo – While Yahoo has been suffering as of late, it’s still a classic and a popular search engine.
• Ask – Clean layout and handy results grouping.
• AOL Search – AOL continues to be used, primarily by people who still use AOL. They’re out there somewhere.
• DogPile – the once alternative to Google is getting a comeback and is a great alternative to bigger search engines.
• Duck Duck Go – Doesn’t track your search history and is avoids spammy sites.
• The Internet Archive – This search engine lets users travel back in time to see how web pages looked in years gone by. A very fun search engine to play around with.

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