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Section three - Portals Online Information Review - Apr 00 - The evolution of web searching In a previous research paper (5) in which I examined the relationship between portals and information providers, I defined portals as 'those web sites that are jockeying for pole position as starting points for the Internet user's experience'. Unlike today, where portals are the focal point for carefully crafted multi-million dollar e-commerce strategies, portals initially evolved gradually from the early experience (1994) of three types of Internet company. Each of these companies performed a distinct role in the information distribution chain that defined the Internet user's experience. They were: Internet service/access providers - AOL and CompuServe (which was later acquired by AOL) Recognised that they were at the bottom end of the Internet user's 'experience value-chain'. They merely provided connectivity, which was plentiful. Such a low-value evaluation would translate into low margins unless something was done. Search sites - Yahoo! Infoseek (now Go), Lycos and Excite All recognised that usage of their services was transitory - once the user had found what they were looking for, they would click on the result and move off to another website. Such narrowly defined usage was not an attractive business proposition for either investors or advertisers. Browser providers - Netscape and Microsoft Millions of users were greeted with the home pages Netscape (Netcenter) and Microsoft (MSN) as they switched on their PCs each morning. Most users didn't know how, or couldn't be bothered, to change the default setting in their browsers. This behavioural inertia was primarily responsible for the huge traffic figures to these two web sites. Each type of Internet company had something to offer the others. Together they controlled most aspects of the information distribution chain. All wanted to increase their 'stickiness'; the length of time each user spent at their web site, before clicking off onto another site. All wanted to attract as many 'eyeballs'/users as possible. To achieve these two goals it was recognised that the user's primary destination website had to offer as much value to the user as possible. As users were ceding control of their initial Internet experiences (they still do), Microsoft, Netscape, AOL etc were able to control users' primary destination web site each time the user logged on. As search sites were the first desired destination sites of users, these companies licensed search engine and web directory providers to provide search services. Thus emerged the concept of the portal. Portals became a huge success. However, in the rush for eyeballs and their attendant dollars, many search providers began to neglect their core service - their search index or web directory. From late 1996 until September 1997 the growth of the main search engine indexes and web directories was negligible (6), despite the continued relentless growth of the web. The spurt in growth of most search engine indexes in the first half of 1996 was primarily attributable to the arrival of AltaVista at the end of 1995, with the largest search index at the time. This period was also marked by a distinct lack of search technology innovation. Although meta search engines such as Mamma, Dogpile and Metacrawler first rose to prominence during this period, their search functionality was essentially based on the 'location and frequency of keywords' approach that was developed by the main search engines. Meanwhile, the distinction between search engines and web directories became somewhat blurred for the user as the search engines licensed web directories and vice versa, whilst AOL, Netscape, Microsoft et al. licensed both. This cross fertilisation resulted in portals becoming all encompassing search sites. It was not until the arrival of a 'second-generation' of search engine providers in 1998 that new approaches to indexing and searching the web became available. Next: Section four - Search technology evolves Related Research paper: Portals: The business potential of highly trafficked web site

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