In IT they say you’ve made it the your company becomes a verb. “Why don’t you Google it?”, “Just Afterpay it”, “I Ubered to her place for a bunk-up”. You get the drift. And Google has become pretty much the only search engine around. But in the early days of the internet, things were different…
The early years of the internet saw search engines such as Alta Vista, Lycos, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo become prominent. These search engines were the primary means for users to locate and access the wealth of information available on the burgeoning internet – along with web-rings – pages that linked to each other. Each of these search engines had its own features, algorithms, and approaches to indexing and ranking content.
One of the first search engines to make a significant impact on the internet was Alta Vista. It was launched in 1995 and quickly established itself as one of the most powerful search engines of its time. This was thanks to its algorithms and its ability to index a vast amount of content. Alta Vista was also notable for its advanced search options, which allowed users to refine their queries in a range of ways, such as by date, language, and location.
Another early search engine was Lycos, which launched in 1994. It was known for its simple interface and intuitive design, which made it very accessible to users who were new to the internet. Lycos was also notable for its human-edited directory, which was one of the first efforts to organize the web by topic. This directory was later replaced by Lycos’ own search algorithm, which was based on a “spidering” approach to indexing and ranking content.
Yet another early search engine was Yahoo, which also launched in 1994. Yahoo began as a directory-based search engine, but later expanded to offer both a directory and a search engine. Yahoo’s early success was due to its ability to organise the web into a hierarchy of topics. This made it very easy to navigate and eventually Yahoo developed its own search algorithm, which incorporated both human editing and spidering.
Despite their early successes, Alta Vista, Lycos, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo all eventually lost ground to Google, which was launched in 1998. Google would become a behemoth of search engines. Google’s search algorithm was more sophisticated than any of its predecessors, and it was also more effective at identifying relevant content. Google’s simple interface and fast load times also made it very popular with users. Today, Google is the dominant search engine, with a market share of over 90%. However, the early search engines such as Alta Vista, Lycos, Ask Jeeves and Yahoo all played a critical role in shaping the internet as we know it today.