Comments on: What Did Search Look Like a Decade Ago?

By: Bill Slawski

Bill Slawski — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:20:33 +0000

Hi Sarah,

The internet Archive (archive.org), where I got the older images, is definitely an interesting place to find out more about the history of the Web, and of the history of Web design. It’s highly recommended.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 12:47:39 +0000

Most of these I’ve never even heard of, I only know Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. When I look at some of these old websites it makes me think “wow websites used to be squareish”

By: Bill Slawski

Bill Slawski — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:39:40 +0000

Hi Michael,

The latest Comscore stats I saw, I believe had Google at about 72 percent of the search market in the US.

By: Michael Fiske

Michael Fiske — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:41:49 +0000

Yes, I remember them all. What’s interesting is how quickly they faded from glory. It used to be confusing to decide which search engine to use. When Google came out, the choice was clear. They figured out how to do it better, or at least deliver the perception of doing it better, and here they are (so far). Does anyone know the percentage of search engine users who use Google now?

By: Bill Slawski

Bill Slawski — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:24:36 +0000

Hi Mark,

It is interesting to see the evolution of search. By providing both a search box and a directory, search engines let people choose which way they might want to try to explore a topic. If you don’t know too much about a specific subject, there is some value to letting people browse through a directory and narrow a topic down from a general topic to a much more specific one.

Even as most search engines got better at crawling the Web, those directory interfaces lingered on with many.

One thing important to keep in mind is that the concept of “relevance” has a number of different meanings. A page can be relevant because it contains the keywords found in a query. It can also relevant if it is a good match for a searcher’s intent, even if it doesn’t contain the exact query terms. It can also be relevant if it meets a searcher’s informational needs. SEO has been around through that kind of evolution of relevance, and the evolution of search engines.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:29:48 +0000

One funny thing to note is that all of the old search engines, if you would notice, used to have directories built into the home pages. You don’t see that anymore. I believe that is really what the first search engines were, just directories that people would submit sites to. Then, they started searching beyond their borders and spidering the content and links found on the pages of submitted links. Once that ball started rolling, it only gained momentum. Eventually, the directories were taken off of the home pages and only organic results and ads were shown. Then, from that point forward, relevancy was and still is “king” and the determination of relevancy became an extremely complicated algorithm combined with statistical and behavioral monitoring and linking among other things thus giving rise to none other than S.E.O…something we are all familiar with here…:)

By: Bill Slawski

Bill Slawski — Mon, 03 May 2010 19:48:51 +0000

Hi Martin,

You’re welcome. I haven’t looked back at past designs for eBay, but it sounds like an interesting idea. I haven’t done much with it, but know a few people who have used it a lot over the past decade or so. Seems like there’s still some interesting stuff that can be found there.

By: Martin

Martin — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:45:55 +0000

I certainly do remember those days. Webcrawler was always second to yahoo in the results. One website that has changed surprisingly little over time is actually Ebay. Back then it was a magical site and it was actually possible to pick up some serious good bargains. NO SEO required on their part. The amount of natural backlinks they received was phenomenal.

Thank you for that bit of nostalgia.

Martin