INTERNET TIMELINE

DID YOU KNOW?

Google can search 1000 computers and return 5million results in about 0.16 seconds. It operates over 467,000 servers and invests over $2billion a year in upgrades and development.

In 1997

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Article: Search Engine History

JUNE 30, 2008: THE WEB HAS BECOME ESSENTIAL to contemporary communications since it entered the public eye in 1993. We sometimes forget though, that this is one more step in a continuing process of improving global connectivity that includes supporting trade routes, the pony express, the telegraph, telephone, radio and TV.

In the beginning, the internet consisted of folders on computeres linked together by FTP. You needed to know where a file was located before you could access it. The first search engine was Archie. Archie let users make queries. Then it searched the FTP sites and created an index, which the user could view. Veronica and Gopher followed soon after.

As HTML and the WWW developed, internet search engines developed to crawl through it. Each one offered a unique method to create the database, understand the query and display responses. View a list of early search engines here. Many, like Yahoo, used people to visit websites and categorize them manually. Part of my job then was submitting a new site to the search engines for review.

In 1997-98 AOL, MSN and Google created databases categorizing content by keyword. They soon dominated the search engine space along with Yahoo. At the same time GoTo.com created the pay-for-click concept allowing website owners to buy space on a search engine. GoTo became Overture became Yahoo Search Marketing. Pay-per-click also generated banner advertising which made it possible to make money putting content online.

Search Engine Growth

Before Google, it was relatively easy to get a good ranking on a search engine because there were so few websites online. Rank was based on the frequency with which a term was used on the page and/or in meta tags.

As the web grew, such simple algorithms became useless. Millions of pages might contain the desired keyword but users expected pages dedicated to their topic. Other factors were needed to refine the search including links from outside the site.

More recently, past history and clickstream data factor in as we head towards algorithms that recognize how a user has been interacting with the web before beginning the query. The idea is to use statistical (aggregated) data to make correct assumptions about the user and the type of information they need. To do this, blended search algorithms access the user's own web history data. Where you have been will affect where Google guides you next.

In the newest generation of search engines, rank will be determined by

• keyword density: how often the words are on the page and their proximity to other words
• links from authoritative sites such as government websites and wikis
• paid links
• social factors: have people opted to recommend the website on their own pages in de.licio.us and similar social networks and blogs
• the user's history, aggregated with behavioural targeting.
• Recommendations: The equivalent of "Other people who purchased this product, bought that product too." Take a look at Netflix. Pandora, MyStrands, MatchMine, Zync and StumbleUpon.

1992 - Web browsers were developed for Windows, Mac, UNIX or the Amiga.

1993 - HTML goes public. AOL goes online. Mosaic becomes the de facto standard for web browsers.

1994 - HTML 2.0 released. Yahoo is created by David Filo and Jerry Yang, to track the growing number of websites

1996 - Microsoft releases Internet Explorer.

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