| When the World Wide Web came into being in the | | | | presence felt and it used statistical analysis of |
| early 1990s, almost twenty years since the | | | | word relations to spot a particular web resource. |
| 'ARPANET/internet' went public, it has thrown | | | | It was followed by Yahoo in 1994, as a website |
| open the doors to a virtual and vast new world | | | | providing a listing of its favorite web pages. The |
| of information, which was both unfathomable and | | | | format of the main link or URL followed by a brief |
| ever expanding. But, as the number of web pages | | | | description of what is in the site was first |
| and the number of people accessing the internet | | | | introduced by Yahoo. Within a year, funds started |
| increased, accessing a particular resource from | | | | to flow in, and soon Yahoo became a corporation. |
| the sea of information became a problem, | | | | Lycos, with its prefix matching, relevance |
| especially in the event of a person not knowing | | | | retrieval, and word proximity, announced its entry |
| the URL of a particular website. Necessity has | | | | onto the webi in almost the same period as |
| always been the mother of invention; the need | | | | Yahoo. It was a large search engine and by 1996, |
| for a tool to search the required resource from | | | | it had indexed over 60 million web pages, the |
| the millions of pages of information in the World | | | | biggest by any search engine of that time. Alta |
| Wide Web was gravely felt. So what is | | | | Vista is another search tool that had made |
| considered to be the first amongst the first | | | | headlines again in the same period - with |
| generation of search engines 'Archie' was created. | | | | advanced search options and allowing natural |
| Archie was created by Alan Emtage in 1990 and | | | | language inquires. It was also the first to provide |
| used the directory listings of all files existing in the | | | | multimedia search options to find music files, |
| public anonymous FTP websites to create a | | | | videos, and pictures. |
| searchable database of file names. A year later, | | | | Ironic as it may be, the search engine that is |
| Gopher, which had a similar purpose to Archie, but | | | | touted as the most popular today, Google, came |
| with text files, was introduced by Mark McCahill at | | | | into existence rather late in the scene in 1997. It |
| the University of Minnesota. The programs, | | | | used inbound links to rank websites, but the |
| Veronica and Jughead, which followed Gopher, | | | | results it produced were widely accepted and in |
| worked similarly, on plain text files sent via | | | | another year's time, it became the most sought |
| Gopher. | | | | after search engine in the world. Its nearest |
| The world of web searches took a decisive turn | | | | competitor, MSN Search, and Open Directory, the |
| in 1993, when MIT student Matthew Gray made | | | | biggest hand edited catalogue of the web, came |
| the first robot, the World Wide Web Wanderer. It | | | | into being in 1998. |
| was initially meant to count web servers on the | | | | As of now, Google has the greatest number of |
| World Wide Web, but was later reprogrammed to | | | | patrons, followed by Yahoo and MSN. |
| search URLs as well, thus forming the first | | | | In the near future, as the scene consolidates, the |
| website database, Wandex. ALIWEB released in | | | | number of search engines that remain in the race |
| 1993 was also a robot, but with an added feature | | | | may come down to the current top few. But |
| allowing users to submit their own URLs for | | | | then all will be providing more advanced and |
| indexing purposes. | | | | diverse features alongside searching, and it is the |
| Web robots are also called web crawlers, web | | | | common netizens who stand to gain from the |
| spiders or web wanderers. In its earlier versions, it | | | | final outcome. After all, this is how product |
| was criticized for taking too much bandwidth, | | | | economics responds to competition! |
| often leading to a server crash. But the issue was | | | | Finally it should be said, that the number of search |
| sorted out in later generations. | | | | engines that have come and gone without leaving |
| As the World Wide Web started to grow | | | | a trace in between, are many. However, only the |
| phenomenally by the mid 90s, realizing its financial | | | | most significant ones have been mentioned in this |
| potential, more players began throwing their hats | | | | article. |
| into the ring. Excite was the first to make their | | | | |