A Star is Born.
The heavy reliance of on site factors such a keyword density, which could be (and was being) directly manipulated by webmasters to control their rankings had gotten many search engines in difficulty. To offer useful search results to internet users, search engines had to alter the way in which ranking of pages, that actually were relevant and offered valuable content was performed. More complex algorithms had started being developed that took into account off-site factors, such as directory age and link popularity to determine rankings. The cracking of search engine algorithms became a more difficult and sophisticated task.
At this time the head of the search engine pack was Alta Vista with the balance split between Lycos, MSN, Yahoo and InfoSeek. All of these still exist today but are (as we know) less favored. InfoSeek and AltaVista have offloaded their search, both of which are now ‘powered by Yahoo!’.
Even though algorithm had improved black hat SEO’s were still manipulating them and site theft and page jacking was rampant. On September4 1998 Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google algorithm ‘PageRank’, determined site rankings by measuring the quantity and quality of the inbound links. Google’s superior, relevant search results immediately attracted a loyal bunch of followers and the competing search engines began to realize how important it was to keep up with Google’s new page ranking technology.
The new millennium dawned and Google was solidifying its lead and fast becoming the de-facto search engine. The former front runners were just as fast becoming internet history. In fact by 2001 Excite, Lycos, AltaVista and Hotbot were all but abandoned by users.
Here’s a short video that was made just over a year ago at Google’s 10th birthday in September 2008. Its short but shows how far the company that was built on a university project has come in 10 years……
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