SEO: A brief history of search engines

A brief history of search engines

• • In 1990,
  • In 1993,
  • In 1994,
  • In 1995,
  • In 1996,
  • In 1997,
  • In 1998,
  • In 1999,
  • In 2000,
  • In 2001,
  • In 2002,
  • In 2003,
  • In 2004,
  • In 2005,
  • In 2006,
  • In 2007,
  • In 2009,
  • In 2010,
  • In 2011,
  • In 2012,
  • In 2013,
  • In 2014,

With the development of the Internet, the emergence of search engines is inevitable. Just like the traditional library, the collection of books, documents, management, search will inevitably be difficult, index and search will become necessary. In fact, search engine theory is largely derived from traditional file retrieval technology.

The amount of online resources is far beyond our personal imagination and control, without search engines, we can hardly effectively use these resources, and there is no Internet today.

Nowadays, social media is in the ascendancy. The number of users, website traffic and social influence of applications such as Weibo, wechat, Facebook and Twitter have reached or even exceeded those of Internet giants such as Baidu and Google. There is a tendency and a view that Internet users now look for information more on Twitter, Facebook and Twitter than on search engines. Maybe search engines are obsolete?

Seos don’t have to worry. Perhaps Google, Baidu will decline, will disappear, but the search engine will not. Even if weibo, WeChat, Facebook, Twitter, or what new network after service, the user to search for information, as you want to enter between the key in the search box, or in accordance with the brigade in the era of mobile Internet voice input, this is the search, search information source may only included the page from the search engines to according to the library becomes rich, In the internal databases of Facebook and Twitter, the ranking algorithm has changed from page relevance and links to the recommendation degree and comments of members and friends. However, the change of data source and algorithm cannot change users’ need for search function, nor will it change the basic form of search.

As long as search exists, there will be which piece of information in front of the problem, there will be the existence of SEO. Maybe the name of the search engine has changed, SEO just needs to change its name.

Search is one of the fastest changing areas of the Internet in the last 20 years. This kind of change is not only reflected in the search technology advances by leaps and leaps and the huge impetus to the network economy, the search engine itself is also wonderful, often dazzling, jaw-dropping feeling.

Understanding the history of search engine development can help SEO personnel understand the development and transformation of search engine marketing, and have a more accurate forecast of the future. This section briefly lists the important events in the history of search engines, many of which have had a significant impact on the shape of the search and SEO industry today.

In 1990,

Archie, the first Internet search engine, appeared to search for files on FTP servers. The Http-based Web had not yet emerged.

In 1993,

In 1994,

In January

Infoscek was created, and its search service was officially launched later. Infoseek was one of the most important early search engines that allowed webmasters to submit web sites from Infoseek. Robin Li, baidu’s founder, is one of Infoseek’s core engineers.

April

Yahoo! It was founded by David Filo and Jerry Yang. The Yahoo. conl domain was not registered at that time, and the site was built on Stanford University’s domain name. Yahoo! Originally not a real search engine, but a manually edited directory of websites, the founders personally collected valuable sites listed in Yahoo! Directory. When the number of websites is not large, manual editing can be realized, which not only provides users with convenience, but also promotes the quality of information. It quickly grew into an Internet giant.

The first full-text search engine (indexing the entire contents of files) WetCrawler was launched. It started as a research project at the University of Washington. It was acquired by AOL in 1995 and by Exie in 1996. In 2001, the site stopped developing its own search technology and became a metasearch engine.

June

Lycos was founded and quickly became one of the most popular search engines

In 1995,

In 1996,

march

Google began as a Stanford University research project of founders Lary Page and Sergey Brin as BackRub, before changing its name to Google in 1997.

April

Yahoo! On the market.

On may

Inkomi was founded and was an important early provider of search technology. There is no search site or interface for users, but search technology for other companies. Inkomi was the first to pay for inclusion, but Google and others proved it impossible.

Hotbot started using Inktomi data. It was acquired by Lycos in 1998 and later transformed into a metasearch engine that displays results from Google.fast, Teoma and Inktomi. It was also one of the first popular search engines.

In November,

Lyeos collected 60 million files, making it the largest search engine at the time. Compared to today’s search engine databases, it’s a small fry.

In 1997,

In 1998,

On February 21st

GoTo (later renamed Overture) officially launched Pay For Placemnent, a service that puts those who Pay the most in front of the queue. Much maligned at the time, it became the ancestor of paid search advertising (Baidu Promotion, Google Adwords, etc.), the most important revenue source for all major search engines. The creation of Direet hits, in which user clicks to search results were an important part of the ranking factor, made Direet hits popular for a while, but soon led to a sharp decline in search quality. Today’s search engine algorithm to introduce user browsing data, as early as in the early search engine exploration and left a lesson, bad processing, will be used by cheaters.

In mid-1998, Disney became Ifosek’s holding company, transforming Infoseck into a portal. Early search engines do not have a clear profit model, when they encounter difficulties such as search quality decline and no income, they often adopt the method of transforming into a portal, hoping for Yaboo! That makes money from online display advertising, but there are few successful examples. This for Google and other latecomers insist on improving the search technology, adhere to the simple search core business provided a precedent.

Also in 1998. AltaVista was sold to Compaq. In October 1999, Compaq also converted AltaVista into a portal, and AltaVista went into decline.

In 1998, Yaboo! Drop AlaVista, which has been in use since 1996, and use Inkomi’s search data instead. Early Yloo only displayed data from real search engines when there was no site the user was looking for in its directory.

On September

Google was officially founded.

MSN Search launched. For a long time, though, Microsoft didn’t take Search seriously, until 2004, when MSN Search used Search data and technology from other providers.

In 1999,

In 2000,

In January

Aak Jeeves paid $500m for Direct Hit, a search engine, but did not take it any further. Direct Hit officially ended in early 2002.

January 18: Baidu was founded. As a search technology provider, Qiwu provides Chinese search services and data to other websites.

On may

Lycos was acquired by Spanish company Terra Networks and renamed Tera Lycos. Terra Lycos has been on the wane since the dotcom bubble burst.

In July

Yahoo! He began to use Google search data to cultivate the most powerful competitors in the future with his most powerful online brand and traffic.

In the middle of 2000, GoTo.com basically gave up the practice of attracting users with its own website and began to provide paid search services to a number of search engines and websites, including MetaCrawler.com, DogPile.com, Ask Jeeves, AOL,Netscape and so on. This may have been one of GoTo.com’s (later Overture) major missteps, a pioneering model whose brand name was not recognized by the average user and thus could not compete with a household name like Google.

On October

Google launched AdWords, a CPM, or pay-per-display, search advertising service. The model was not successful.

In 2001,

In 2002,

march

Google Adwords introduced PPC, or pay per click, as the mainstream Adwords today. PPC search advertising was invented by Overure and expanded by Coogle. Since PPC, Google Adwords has really been accepted and widely used by customers, and Google has become an online money-making machine that takes full advantage of search.

On may

AOL ditched Inktomi and started using Google to search for data.

On October

Yahoo! Forgo returning Yahoo! The practice of data in the directory is completely changed to display Google search data. Yahoo! The directory is still the most important website directory, but it is clear that there are fewer and fewer users.

On December

Yahoo! The acquisition of Inktomi, which had struggled with a profitable business model, was the prelude to a series of acquisitions and consolidations in 2003. Yahoo! They obviously want to have their own search technology, rather than continue to rely on other search engines like Google

In 2003,

In 2004,

On February

As everyone expected, Yahoo! After acquiring several major search companies, he launched his own search engine without using Google data and technology.

In August

Google listed.

In November,

Microsoft has launched its own Search engine, MSN Search. It no longer uses third-party Search services. The beginning of the Triumvirate.

In 2005,

In 2006,

On may

Microsoft launched AdCenter, an advertising system similar to Google’s Adwords.

On September

MSN Search renamed Live Search, in fact, MSN network brand changed to Live, and do a lot of promotion. But it hasn’t significantly increased Microsoft’s share of the search market, and Google is still dominant.

In 2007,

In 2009,

June

Microsoft Live Search changed its name to Bing.

On July 29th

Microsoft and Yahoo! In a historic deal, Yahoo! Will gradually abandon its own search technology and use Bing data. A few years earlier, Yahoo! Always push stuck in the predicament, CEO several replacement, major shareholders neijiang, search market share continues to decline. Finally, the Yahoo! Was defeated in the search war by Google. Yahoo! Was a hero, but Yahoo! The era is officially over.

In 2010,

In 2011,

On February 24

Google launched Panda updates designed to reduce the number of low-quality pages in search results. Until September 2014, Google. 27 Panda updates have been launched. Panda update has a profound impact on the SEO industry.

In 2012,

In 2013,

On February 20

Baidu has launched an algorithm to crack down on websites involved in link buying and selling.

On may

Baidu launches pomegranate algorithm to crack down on low quality content pages.

June

Yahoo! Closed AltaVista when red pole is turned off.

In July

Baidu launched Luoluo 2.0, continue to fight against spam links, this time the focus is advertorials.

In August

Google introduced hummingbird algorithm, which is a rewrite of the entire ranking algorithm.

In 2014,