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