- 1. There has been so much development when it comes to the Internet and the search engines that it becomes important for Internet enthusiasts to know how it all began.
- 2. History of Search Engines
- 3. How do Search Engines work?
- 4. How Google Became the #1 Search Engine on the Internet?
- 5. Wrapping Up
There has been so much development when it comes to the Internet and the search engines that it becomes important for Internet enthusiasts to know how it all began.
Therefore, in this post we are going to share our findings related to the history of search engines and how Google started dominating the Internet since the very beginning.
By the end of this post. you will have a complete idea of how search engines came into being and how Google capitalised on the opportunity to become the world’s most popular search engine.
So, without any further ado, let’s get into the content!
History of Search Engines
The first search engine that came into being was Archie. It was created in the year 1990, just after the World Wide Web (WWW) was invented. This search engine crawled through an index of downloadable files.
Then in 1993, JumpStation was launched, which took linear search to a whole new level. The result page displayed the pages title and header in the same space. It was now when the websites started to get ranked on the result page.
In 1994, Yahoo! was created by David Filo and Jerry Yang. The Yahoo! website was the first collection of the webpages on the Internet. If you had an informational website then you could get ranked on Yahoo! for free. However, if you had a commercial website you had to pay $300 per year to get ranked.
Google was officially launched in the year 1998. From there a series of acquisitions and mergers take place making Yahoo! and Google some of the most dominating search engines in the history of the Internet. Google has been releasing algorithm updates since 2003, with the first update being called the ‘Boston’ update.
How do Search Engines work?
To understand the proper functioning of search engines, we will have to take a deep dive into the nitty-gritty of search engines and make our way up from there. Let’s first talk about the search engine index.
A search engine index is essentially a data structure that is used to store the URLs of web pages that can be found on the Internet. The search engine index does not only include the discovered URLs.
It also includes the relevant key signals related to the websites. Some of these relevant key signals are keywords, quality of content, the freshness of the page, and previous user engagement on the domain.
We will also have to understand why search engines always come up with search engine algorithms. Search engine algorithms are nothing but a set of guidelines that are created to ensure the search results are relevant and of high-quality. Not just that, search engine algorithms are also created to ensure the user gets the results as quickly as possible.
Whenever a search query is entered into the search bar, the search engine pulls the information that it can gather relevant to the search query. It has algorithms that rank the information into a set of results. The information that we are talking about is the website URLs that have been indexed by the search engines.
However, the websites that are ranked on the search engine result page can be different for different search engines. What we mean by that is the websites shown on the first page of Google might not be shown on the first page of Bing.
Search engines don’t just use the search query for creating a list of search results. They also use other relevant data to return relevant results. These data factors can be location, the language of the user, previous search history of the user, and the device the query is being made on.
This is pretty much how Google and other search engines function. However, these search engines keep updating their algorithms and thus, the way they function also keeps on evolving with time.
How Google Became the #1 Search Engine on the Internet?
Google is one of the tech giants we have in 2020. But, the Google search engine is definitely the most popular search engine in the history of the Internet. In this section, we will figure out what exactly made Google better than at adversaries.
Incredible Speed
Internet users are impatient. They want information at the speed of light and Google does everything it can to provide results at 5 to 10 times faster rate than all its competitors. Google has always been setting the benchmark for speed and also for transparency. It shows the users how quickly the results were delivered. Google’s query speed is definitely the highest on the Internet.
Deeper Index
Google search engine was built on the academic thesis model. This is why it is able to crawl deeper than all its competitors. This helps Google to create an extensive data structure that has better and richer results. Whenever a user enters a search query Google shows the number of results it has for the user and the number is ridiculously high.
Relevant Results
Google search results are highly relevant to the users’ search query. Google is able to do that thanks to its extensive indexing and crawling. One of the greatest algorithm updates, PageRank, was brought in by Google to ensure that online users are provided with the most appropriate search results for a better user experience on its platform.
Simple Interface
Talking about user experience, no one can argue about Google’s supremacy when it comes to providing the simplest interface to the users. The Google search engine is the cleanest and uses a minimalistic approach to provide relevant search results to its users.
Focused Search
Lastly, Google has been focusing hard on making Google search engine one of their greatest products. Google invests heavily when it comes to building a great framework, monetization strategy, and user experience for all its online products.
Wrapping Up
There you have it. we have shared everything that you need to know to understand how search engines came into existence. We hope now you understand why Google is considered to be one of the most influential Internet companies in the world. Have questions? We would love to hear from you – contact us!