Timeline of web search engines

This page provides a full timeline of web search engines, starting from the Archie search engine in 1990. It is complementary to the history of web search engines page that provides more qualitative detail on the history.

Full timeline

Year Month and date (if available) Event type Event
1990 Pre-web search engine The Archie search engine, created by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch, computer science students at McGill University in Montreal, goes live. The program downloads the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, creates a searchable database of a lot of file names; however, Archie does not index the contents of these sites since the amount of data is so limited it can be readily searched manually.[1][2][3][4]
1991 Pre-web search engine The rise of Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota) leads to two new search programs, Veronica and Jughead. Like Archie, they search the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provides a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead (Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) is a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers. While the name of the search engine "Archie" was not a reference to the Archie comic book series, "Veronica" and "Jughead" are characters in the series, thus referencing their predecessor.[3]
1992 Virtual library of the web Timothy Berners-Lee sets up the Virtual Library (VLib), a loose confederation of topical experts maintaining relevant topical link lists.[3][4]
1993 June First web robot Matthew Gray produces the first known web robot, the Perl-based World Wide Web Wanderer, and uses it to generate an index of the web called the Wandex.[3][4][5] However, the World Wide Web Wanderer is intended only to measure the size of the web rather than to facilitate search.
1993 September 2 First web search engine W3Catalog, written by Oscar Nierstrasz at the University of Geneva, is released to the world. It is the world's first web search engine. It does not rely on a crawler and indexer but rather on already existing high-quality lists of websites. One of its main drawbacks is that the bot accesses each page hundreds of times each day, causing performance degradation.[3][4][6][7]
1993 October/November Second web search engine Aliweb, a web search engine created by Martijn Koster, is announced. It does not use a web robot, but instead depends on being notified by website administrators of the existence at each site of an index file in a particular format. The absence of a bot means that less bandwidth is used; however, most website administrators are not aware of the need to submit their data.[3][4]
1993 December First web search engine to use a crawler and indexer JumpStation, created by Jonathon Fletcher, is released. It is the first WWW resource-discovery tool to combine the three essential features of a web search engine (crawling, indexing, and searching).[3][4][8]
1994 January New web search engine Infoseek is launched.[3][4]
1994 January Web search engine supporting natural language queries Altavista is launched. This is a first among web search engines in many ways: it has unlimited bandwidth, allows natural language queries, has search tips, and allows people to add or delete their domains in 24 hours.[3][4]
1994 March New web search engine The World-Wide Web Worm is released. It is claimed to have been created in September 1993, at which time there did not exist any crawler-based search engine, but it is not the earliest at the time of its actual release. It supports Perl-based regular expressions.[3][4]
1994 April 20 New web search engine The WebCrawler search engine, created by Brian Pinkerton at the University of Washington, is released.[4] Unlike its predecessors, it allows users to search for any word in any webpage, which has become the standard for all major search engines since.
1994 April New web directory Yahoo! launches its web directory.[4] Yahoo! would not build its own web search engine until 2002, relying until then on outsourcing the search function to other companies.
1994 July New web search engine Lycos, a web search engine, is released.[4] It began as a research project by Michael Loren Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon University's main Pittsburgh campus.
1995 New web directory LookSmart is released. It competes with Yahoo! as a web directory, and the competition makes both directories more inclusive.
1996 January–March New web search engine Larry Page and Sergey Brin begin working on BackRub, the predecessor to Google Search. The crawler begins activity in March.[4]
1996 May New web search engine Inktomi releases its HotBot search engine.[4]
1997 April New natural language-based web search engine Ask Jeeves, a natural language web search engine, that aims to rank links by popularity, is released. It would later become Ask.com.[4][9]
1998 July–September New web search portal MSN launches a search portal called MSN Search, using search results from Inktomi. After many changes to the backend search engine, MSN would start developing in-house search technology in 2005, and later change its name to Bing in June 2009.
1997 September 15 New web search engine The domain Google.com is registered.[9] Soon, Google Search is available to the public from this domain (around 1998).
1997 September 23 New web search engine (non-English) Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich launch their Russian web search engine yandex.ru and publicly present it at the Softool exhibition in Moscow. The initial development is by Comptek; Yandex would become a separate company in 2000.[10]
1998 June 5 New web directory Gnuhoo, a web directory project by Rich Skrenta and Bob Truel, both employees of Sun Microsystems, launches.[4][11] It would later be renamed the Open Directory Project.
1999 May New web search engine AlltheWeb, based on the Ph.D. thesis of Tor Egge at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, titled FTP Search, launches. The engine is launched by Egge's company Fast Search & Transfer, established on July 16, 1997.[4]
2000 January 1 New web search portal Baidu, a Chinese company that would grow to provide many search-related services, launches.
2002-3 Web search business consolidation Yahoo! buys Inktomi (2002) and then Overture Services Inc. (2003) which has already bought AlltheWeb and Altavista. Starting 2003, Yahoo! starts using its own Yahoo Slurp web crawler to power Yahoo! Search. Yahoo! Search combines the technologies of all Yahoo!'s acquisitions (until 2002, Yahoo! had been using Google to power its search).
2004-5 November (2004) - February (2005) Change in backend providers Microsoft starts using its own indexer and crawler for MSN Search rather than using blended results from LookSmart and Inktomi.
2004 December User experience Google Suggest is introduced as a Google Labs feature.[12][13]
2005 January Webmaster tools To combat link spam, Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft collectively introduce the nofollow attribute.[14][15]
2005 October New web search engine Overture owner Bill Gross launches the Snap search engine, with many features such as display of search volumes and other information, as well as sophisticated auto-completion and related terms display. It is unable to get traction and soon goes out of business.[4][16]
2006-2009 New human-curated web search engine Wikia launches Wikia Search, a search engine based on human curation, but then shuts it down. Relevant dates: publicly proposed December 23, 2006[17] and January 31, 2007,[18] private pre-alpha December 24, 2007,[19][20] toolbar release August 2008, shutdown March–May 2009.[21]
2008 January 28 New web search engine Cuil, a web search engine created by ex-Googlers that uses picture thumbnails to display search results, launches.[22] It would later shut down on September 17, 2010.[23][24][25]
2009 July 29 Web search engine consolidation Microsoft and Yahoo! announce that they have made a ten-year deal in which the Yahoo! search engine would be replaced by Bing. Yahoo! will get to keep 88% of the revenue from all search ad sales on its site for the first five years of the deal, and have the right to sell adverts on some Microsoft sites. Yahoo! Search will still maintain its own user interface, but will eventually feature "Powered by Bing™" branding.[26][27] All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners are expected to be transitioned by early 2012.[28]
2009 August 10 (announced), rollout completed and made live June 8, 2010 Search algorithm update Named Caffeine, this update is announced on August 10, 2009. It promises faster crawling, expansion of the index, and a near-real-time integration of indexing and ranking.[14][29][30][31][32] The rollout is made live on June 8, 2010.[33][34][35]
2010 September 8 User experience Google launches Google Instant, described as a search-before-you-type feature: as users are typing, Google predicts the user's whole search query (using the same technology as in Google Suggest, later called the autocomplete feature) and instantaneously shows results for the top prediction.[36][37][38] Google claims that this is estimated to save 2–5 seconds per search query.[39] SEO commentators initially believe that this will have a major effect on search engine optimization, but soon revise downward their estimate of the impact.[14][40]
2010 November 1 New web search engine Blekko, a search engine that uses slashtags to allow people to search in more targeted categories, launches.[41]
2011 June 2 Webmaster tools Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft announce Schema.org, a joint initiative that supports a richer range of tags that websites can use to convey better information.[14][42][43][44]
2011 February 23–24 Search algorithm update Google launches Google Panda, a major update affecting 12% of search queries. The update continues with the earlier work of cracking down on spam, content farms, scrapers, and websites with a high ad-to-content ratio.[14][45][46][47] The rollout is gradual over several months, and Panda will see many further updates.
2012 January 10 Search algorithm update, user experience Google launches Search Plus Your World, a deep integration of one's social data into search.[48][49] SEO commentators are critical of how the search results favor Google+ and push it to users, compared to more widely used social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.[50][51][52][53]
2012 April 24 Search algorithm update Google launches its "Webspam update" which would soon become known as Google Penguin.[14][54][55][56][57]
2012 May 10 User experience Microsoft announces a redesign of its Bing search engine that includes "Sidebar", a social feature that searches users' social networks for information relevant to the search query.[58]
2012 May 16 Search algorithm update Google starts rolling out Knowledge Graph, used by Google internally to store semantic relationships between objects. Google now begins displaying supplemental information about objects related to search queries on the side.[14][59][60][61]
2013 August 21–22 (approximate date for rollout), September 26 (announcement) Search algorithm update Google releases Google Hummingbird, a core algorithm update that may enable more semantic search and more effective use of the Knowledge Graph in the future.[14][62][63]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The First Search Engine, Archie". Archived from the original on 21 June 2007. Retrieved 2007-05-26.
  2. ↑ "In Russian: History of the Internet. The First Search Engine". Retrieved 2012-02-23.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Search Engine History". Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 "History of Search Engines - Chronological List of Internet Search Engines". Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  5. ↑ Gray, Matthew. "Internet Growth and Statistics: Credit and Background". Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  6. ↑ "W3 Catalog History".
  7. ↑ Thomas R. Gruber, Sunil Vemuri and James Rice (December 1995). "Virtual documents that explain How Things Work: Dynamically generated question-answering documents". Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University.
  8. ↑ "Why we nearly McGoogled it". Metro. March 15, 2009. Retrieved February 3, 2014.
  9. 1 2 "Our history in depth". Google. September 15, 1997. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
  10. ↑ About Yandex — History of Yandex. Retrieved May 24, 2011. Archived copy.
  11. ↑ "The GnuHoo BooBoo". Slashdot. Retrieved April 27, 2007.
  12. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (August 25, 2008). "Google.com Finally Gets Google Suggest Feature". Search Engine Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  13. ↑ "At a loss for words?". Official Google Blog. August 25, 2008. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 "Google Algorithm Change History". SEOmoz. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
  15. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (January 18, 2005). "Google, Yahoo, MSN Unite On Support For Nofollow Attribute For Links". Search Engine Watch. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
  16. ↑ Boswell, Wendy. "Snap - A New Kind of Search Engine". About.com. Retrieved February 11, 2014.
  17. ↑ Doran, James (December 23, 2006). "Founder of Wikipedia plans search engine to rival Google". The Times. London. Retrieved January 6, 2007.
  18. ↑ Wales: Search Wikia Will Succeed Where Google Cannot, InformationWeek, February 5, 2007. Retrieved July 27, 2007.
  19. ↑ Wales, Jimmy (December 24, 2007). "private pre-alpha invites available". Retrieved December 24, 2007.
  20. ↑ "Wikia Search Project to Launch January 7, Wales says". The Washington Post. December 24, 2007. Retrieved December 24, 2007.
  21. ↑ Wales giving up on Wikia Search
  22. ↑ Liedtke, Michael, Ex-Google engineers debut 'Cuil' way to search, Associated Press, 28 July 2008, retrieved 13 Dec 2009
  23. ↑ Michael Arrington (2010-09-17). "Cuil Goes Down, And We Hear It’s Down For Good". TechCrunch.
  24. ↑ Devindra, Hardawar (2010-09-17). "Supposed Google-killer Cuil’s reign of terror may finally be over". VentureBeat.
  25. ↑ "Cuil is Stone Cold – Another 'Google Killer' Bites the Dust". SearchEngineWatch. 2010-09-18.
  26. ↑ "Microsoft and Yahoo seal web deal". BBC News. 29 July 2009. Retrieved 2009-07-29.
  27. ↑ Tiffany Wu; Derek Caney (Jul 29, 2009). "REFILE-UPDATE 1-Microsoft, Yahoo in 10-year Web search deal". Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 2009-07-29.
  28. ↑ "When will the change happen? How long will the transition take?". Yahoo!. 1 December 2011. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  29. ↑ "Help test some next-generation infrastructure". Google Webmaster Central Blog. August 10, 2009. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  30. ↑ Parr, Ben (August 10, 2009). "Google Caffeine: A Detailed Test of the New Google". Mashable. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  31. ↑ Siegler, MG (August 10, 2009). "Caffeine: It's Google On Red Bull, Or Something". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  32. ↑ Schoenfeld, Erick (December 28, 2009). "Google Is About To Get Caffeinated With A Faster Search Index". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  33. ↑ "Our new search index: Caffeine". Official Google Blog. June 8, 2010. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  34. ↑ Siegler, MG (June 8, 2010). "Caffeine: Google Finally Brews Its New Pot Of Web Results — 50% Fresher". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  35. ↑ Fox, Vanessa (June 8, 2010). "Google’s New Indexing Infrastructure "Caffeine" Now Live". Search Engine Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  36. ↑ "Search: now faster than the speed of type". Official Google Blog. September 8, 2010. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  37. ↑ Tsotsis, Alexia (September 8, 2010). "Google Instant: It Searches Before You Type". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  38. ↑ "Google Instant, behind the scenes". Official Google Blog. September 9, 2010. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  39. ↑ "About Google Instant". Google. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  40. ↑ Fishkin, Rand (September 21, 2010). "Google Instant: Fewer Changes to SEO than the Average Algo Update". SEOmoz. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  41. ↑ Efrati, Amir (November 1, 2010). "Start-Up Aims at Google: Blekko.com Taps Users to Narrow Results, Avoid Spam Sites". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 11, 2014.
  42. ↑ Fox, Vanessa (June 2, 2011). "Schema.org: Google, Bing & Yahoo Unite To Make Search Listings Richer Through Structured Data". Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  43. ↑ Guha, Ramanathan (June 2, 2011). "Introducing schema.org: Search engines come together for a richer web". Official Google Blog. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  44. ↑ Empson, Rip (June 2, 2011). "Google, Yahoo, And Bing Collaborate On Structured Data To Make Search Listings Richer". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  45. ↑ Singhal, Amit; Cutts, Matt (February 24, 2011). "Finding more high-quality sites in search". Official Google Blog. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  46. ↑ Levy, Steven (March 3, 2011). "TED 2011: The ‘Panda’ That Hates Farms: A Q&A With Google’s Top Search Engineers". Wired Magazine. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  47. ↑ "How Google Panda & Places Updates Created A Rollercoaster Ride For IYP Traffic". Search Engine Land. November 21, 2011. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  48. ↑ Singhal, Amit (January 10, 2012). "Search, plus Your World". Official Google Blog. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  49. ↑ Ulanoff, Lance (January 10, 2012). "Google Merges Search and Google+ Into Social Media Juggernaut". Mashable. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  50. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (January 11, 2012). "Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s "Search Plus" Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy". Search Engine Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  51. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (January 11, 2012). "Twitter Cries Foul Over Google "@WWE" Search, But Google Still Beats Bing". Marketing Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  52. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (January 10, 2012). ""Search Plus Your World" Is Just About Google+, Not Your World". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  53. ↑ Kessler, Sarah (January 13, 2012). "Why Google's Social Search Is Too Much, Too Soon". Mashable. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  54. ↑ Cutts, Matt (April 24, 2012). "Another step to reward high-quality sites". Inside Search: The official Google Search blog. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  55. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (April 26, 2012). "The Penguin Update: Google’s Webspam Algorithm Gets Official Name". Search Engine Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  56. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (April 26, 2012). "Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advice". Search Engine Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  57. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (May 10, 2012). "Two Weeks In, Google Talks Penguin Update, Ways To Recover & Negative SEO". Search Engine Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  58. ↑ Goldman, David (10 May 2012). "Bing fires at Google with new social search". CNN Money. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
  59. ↑ Singhal, Amit (May 16, 2012). "Introducing the Knowledge Graph: things, not strings". The Official Google Blog. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  60. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (May 16, 2012). "Google Launches Knowledge Graph To Provide Answers, Not Just Links". Search Engine Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  61. ↑ Lardinois, Frederic (May 16, 2012). "Google Just Got A Whole Lot Smarter, Launches Its Knowledge Graph". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  62. ↑ Sullivan, Danny (September 26, 2013). "FAQ: All About The New Google "Hummingbird" Algorithm". Search Engine Land. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
  63. ↑ Schwartz, Barry (August 23, 2013). "Some Reports Of An August 21/22 Google Update". Search Engine Roundtable. Retrieved February 2, 2014.
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