History of Search Engines from SEO.com

The History of Search

1990	Archie – First search engine created by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal. Search Methods Before the Internet – Phonebook.
1991	Birth of the Internet – Tim Berners-Lee launched his invention: the World Wide Web.
1993	Aliweb Launched – Allowed users to submit the locations of index files on their sites. Wanderer – The first web crawler to measure the size of the web. Created by Matthew Gray 600 + Websites Online. 10 Million + Internet Users.
1994	WebCrawler – First search engine to index full web pages and allow searchers to search with any word. Lycos – Search engine and web portal launched.
1995	Yahoo! – Launched using a web directory, not a full text index. Alta Vista Launched – Introduced a multi-threaded crawler (Scooter) that could cover many more web pages. Excite – Search engine and web portal launched.
1996	Inktomi Founded – Search technology was used by HotBot and MSN Search Alexa Founded – Alexa Rank is born. SEO NOTE – You could still get a site listed in Yahoo by merely submitting it. As long as it wasn’t too gaudy, you were in within 72 hours. 650 K + Websites Online. 74 Million + Internet Users.
1997	Search Engine Optimization – SEO terminology first used by John Audette and Bruce Clay Yandex Launched – Currently Russia’s largest search engine. Ask Jeeves – Founded by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen.
1998	Google – Launched by Sergey Brin and Larry Page – PageRank was born. DMOZ – Open Directory Project is launched and purchased by Netscape Pay Per Click – Bill Gross developed the original PPC model. MSN Search – Launched using Inktomi’s search technology. SEO NOTE – Most search engines moved to off-page criteria for their ranking algorithms.
1999	SES Conference – First Search Engine Strategies conference created by Danny Sullivan. 2.2 Million + Websites Online. 279 Million + Internet Users.
2000	Yahoo! – Began using Google for search technology, but switched to its own technology in 2004. Baidu – China’s largest search engine launched. PubCon – First event held in London. Google – Introduced the Google Toolbar and Matt Cutts joined the team. AdWords Launched – AdWords is Google’s advertising product and main source of revenue. Google’s advertising revenue totaled $28 Billion in 2010.
2001	The Reign of Google Begins. The Exodus – Users abandoned other search engines such as HotBot, AltaVista and Excite in record numbers. “Many SEOs have sleepless nights as we realize it is Google or bust.” – Brett Tabke, Founder of WebmasterWorld.
2002	Google – Announced the launch of Froogle, a product search engine. Yahoo – Acquired Inktomi for $235 million and offered to buy Google for $3 billion. Google Became a Verb: The American Dialect Society chose it as the “most useful word of 2002.” It was officially added to the Oxford English Dictionary on June 15, 2006.
2003	Blogger and WordPress – Blogging became popular and was utilized for SEO. Google “Florida” Update – This update turned the SEO world upside down. The new algorithm was context based. After this update, it was emphasized that quality of content and HTML code were the most important factors for rankings on a search engine. 38 Million + Websites Online. 782 Million + Internet Users.
2004	SEOMOZ – Founded by Rand Fiskin, first a blog, SEOmoz grew to become one of the largest providers of SEO Tools. Google Local – Google Local introduced to offer relevant neighborhood business listing, maps and directions.
2005	Google – Introduced personalized search. Announced that hyperlinks with rel=”nofollow”[4] would not influence the link target’s PageRank. Google acquired Urchin software and launched Google Analytics. Live Search – MSN rebranded as “Live” search. Yahoo! – Launched Yahoo! SiteExplorer.
2006	Google – Google Webmaster Central is launched. Google, along with MSN and Yahoo, announced joint support for sitemap protocol. YouTube – Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion, which later became the second largest search engine.
2007	Google – Launched Google Product Search. Began campaign against paid links that transfer PageRank. Introduced a “Universal Search” system that blended listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines along with crawling web pages. SMX – First Search Marketing Expo.
2008	Cuil.com – Search engine created by ex-Googlers was launched and later shut down in 2010. Google 10 Pack – Google three pack became the 10 pack, expanding the Local OneBox from three business listings to 10.
2009	Bing – Windows Live Search was rebranded and became Bing. Google – Launched Google Caffeine. Incorporated Twitter data into search results. Introduced Rich Snippets. Updated their brand. New Canonical Tag – Supported by all three major search engines.
2010	Google – Launched Instant Previews. Facebook – Launched Open Graph API, which included the new “Like” button. Yahoo! and Microsoft – Yahoo partnered with Microsoft to use Bing search technology. 240 Million + Websites Online. 2 Billion + Internet Users.
2011	Facebook – Received patent on “curated search,” which involved ranking search results according to a link’s popularity with a user’s social graph. Google +1 – Google kicked social search into high gear with its +1 button, similar to Facebook’s “Like” button. In 2011, 25 percent of bonuses may be based on the success or failure of Google’s social efforts. Google Farmer/Panda Update – Google’s algorithm update devalued content farms like ezinearticles.com and others.
Graphs	Search Engine Market Share. Google. Yahoo. MSN. Bing. The Shift to Online Search Marketing. U.S. Search Engine Marketing Spending (SEO, PPC, etc.) In Millions. 2008-$12,241. 2009-$14,110. 2010-$15,980. 2011-$18,102. 2012-$20,886. 2013-$23,380. Percentage of Companies Shifting Money from Traditional Marketing to SEO. 49% – Print Advertising. 36% – Direct Mail. 24% – Conferences & Exhibits. 21% – Yellow Page Ads. 18% – TV/Radio Ads. Companies’ SEO Spending in 2010. 52% – Spending more on SEO. 39% – Spending about the same. 9% – Spending less.

Read More