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Online Information Review
- Apr 00 - The evolution of web searching
AltaVista | Ask
Jeeves | Direct Hit | Excite
| FAST | GO | Google
| HotBot | Inktomi | LookSmart
| Lycos | Northern
Light | Open Directory | RealNames
| Yahoo
AltaVista
Launched by Digital Equipment Corp. in December 1995 as the largest
search engine on the web. The launch of such a large index forced all
the other major search engines to increase the size of their own indexes
during 1996. Has consistently remained as one of the largest search
engines. This, combined with its range of powerful search commands has
ensured its popularity, especially with researchers. In 1998 Digital
Equipment Corp. was acquired by Compaq who spun off AltaVista as a separate
company in January 1999. Later that year in June, Internet investment
company CMGI, (which also has a shareholding in the Lycos Network, who
in turn are owners of HotBot), acquired a majority 83% stockholding
in AltaVista. CMGI has announced plans to add new services to AltaVista
including an updated index that refreshes at least every 28 days. A
multimedia search engine has already been added. CMGI plans to publicly
list AltaVista at some point in the future.
Ask
Jeeves
Launched in June 1998 as 'the first natural language search agent on
the Internet'. Operates by matching a user's query against a database
of 7M template questions, presenting variant questions if there is no
match. It will also conduct a metasearch across AltaVista, Go (Infoseek),
Lycos and Yahoo! Has been licensed by AltaVista for it's own search
site.
Direct
Hit
Launched in April 1998. Direct Hit offers co-branded search solutions
to other search engine providers. Direct Hit operates by providing a
second level ranking of the user's search results on the basis of 'popularity'.
The company currently licences its technology to ten search sites including
AOL, HotBot, Lycos, MSN and LookSmart. In August 1999 the company announced
that it had raised almost $27M from venture capital firms and private
investors. back to the top
Excite
Launched in late 1995. This search engine was immediately popular with
users due to its large index and integration of non-web material such
as company information. The company acquired two of its competitors,
Magellan and WebCrawler during 1996. In January 1999 Excite was purchased
by high-speed cable Internet access provider @Home and the company became
known as Excite@Home. In June 1999 the company lost it license to provide
the search results at the AOL NetFind portal to competitor search engine
provider Inktomi. Later in September the company announced the launch
of a huge 250M page index and powerful new search functionality. back
to the top
FAST
Launched in May 1999 with the largest ever search engine index at the
time - over 200M pages. This Norwegian company ambitiously aims to index
all of the web- hence its URL. Unlike other search engine companies,
who use mainframe computers to power their services, FAST has linked
together a few hundred Dell PCs (Dell has a 5% stake in the company)
and uses parallel processing to deliver its service. The company plans
to have increased its index size to 300M pages by the end of 1999. back
to the top
Go
(Infoseek)
The Infoseek search engine was launched in 1995. The Disney Corporation
acquired a large stake in Infoseek in June 1998, and in January 1999,
Infoseek, was re-launched and re-branded as a portal site known as Go.
Like many other search portals, Go offers users the option of searching
the index or browsing through a human-compiled web directory. back
to the top
Google
Launched in 1998. Developed by students at Stanford University, USA,
(as was Yahoo!), Google focuses on the link structure of the web to
determine relevant results for the user. Its proprietary technology,
PageRank (named after co-founder Larry Page), crawls the web analysing
both the links between web sites, and the accompanying text around each
hyperlink. The company estimates that its index is between 70M - 100M
pages, but through the links analysis, enables users to reach an estimated
300M web pages - which is currently a much greater reach than any other
search engine provider. Like most other 'second generation' search providers,
the company is focusing on co-branding its technology rather than building
its own search portal. In August the company signed a deal with AOL
subsidiary Netscape to be the main search provider on the Netcenter
portal. back to the top
HotBot
Launched in May 1996 by Wired. Acquired by Lycos in October 1998, but
continues to be run as a separate service from the Lycos search engine.
Accesses the Inktomi search engine index, rather than compiling its
own index. However, primary results are derived from Direct Hit, the
popularity-based search provider (see above).
Directory listings are derived from the Open Directory (see
below). back to the top
Inktomi
Founded in February 1996 Inktomi is probably the most famous search
engine index. It powers the search results for several famous portals
and search sites including HotBot (were it debuted), Yahoo!, AOL, MSN
Search and SNAP. However not all of these companies access Inktomi's
full 110M page index and there are variations in results between the
different search sites due to the different filtering and relevance
ranking algorithms Inktomi provides to each partner company. It is not
possible to interrogate the Inktomi index directly. back
to the top
LookSmart
Launched in October 1996. Like Yahoo!, LookSmart is a human-compiled
directory. In addition to providing its own search site, the company
also licenses its directory to other companies including AltaVista (who
in turn provide search results to LookSmart whenever there is no match
to a user's query within the directory) and in August 1999 with Excite
(replacing Excite's own directory). During that same month, the company
raised US$92.4M on its public listing of 7.7M shares at US$12 each.
back to the top
Lycos
Launched as a search engine in May 1994. The company rapidly diversified
into other areas (AngelFire, Tripod, WiseWire etc.) and e-commerce has
become its primary focus. Although it acquired rival search engine HotBot
in October 1998, it switched to a web directory format in April 1999.
Primary results are now derived from the Open Directory (see below),
with secondary results coming from its own index. It has also added
almost 8,000 databases of information specific to different industries.
HotBot continues to be operated as a separate venture. back
to the top
Northern
Light
Launched in August 1997. Has continually been one of the largest indexes,
gradually increasing in size until it became the biggest search engine
(indexing 16% of the web). This leading position has since been superseded
by the launch of FAST in May 1999. The company also offers a 'special
collection' of non-web material such as newspaper and magazine articles.
Whilst it is free to search within the special collection, users must
pay a charge (up to $US4) to view any articles from this collection.
Search results are clustered in folders by topic. Like AltaVista, this
search engine is popular with researchers due to its scope and functionality.
back to the top
Open
Directory
Launched in June 1998. This directory uses volunteer editors to catalogue
the web. This initiative quickly gained prominence and was acquired
by Netscape later in November of that year. Netscape pledged to allow
anyone to use the directory. In April Lycos re-launched itself as a
directory service, deriving its primary results from the Open Directory.
back to the top
RealNames
Launched in 1998. Formerly known as Centraal Corp., RealNames charges
companies an annual US$100 to register individual keywords, such as
company name, or a brand name. Obviously many companies want to, and
do, register many keywords to protect their brands etc. This has proved
a very successful economic model for the company and in August 1999
it successfully raised over US$70M from venture capitalists in a third
round of financing. Although the index is directly available as a download
from the company's website, and is incorporated within Microsoft's Internet
Explorer 5 browser, its most notable success has been access from search
engines that license its index, such as AltaVista and Go (Infoseek).
back to the top
Yahoo!
Launched in late 1994, Yahoo! has become the most popular search site
on the web, accounting for a staggering 43.5% of all search engine referrals
in August 1999(1). It is the web's largest human-compiled directory,
listing over 1M sites. These directory listings are also supplemented
by search results derived from Inktomi's 110M page search index. Launched
a new photo search service during the summer.
1. 'The top ten referring search engines',
www.statmarket.com,
September 1999
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