IndustrySearch History Articles & Search Engine Timeline

Search History Articles & Search Engine Timeline

Key events relating to search engines, in chronological order.

Looking to catch up on key events with search engines and learn more about their history? The Stats: History category of Search Topics lists various articles on the topic published after August 2004. Articles from August 2004 and before are shown in the Search History Articles section below.

After the search history articles is a search engine timeline from 1994 through 1999. Following the timeline are tips on how to view all Search Engine Watch content chronologically, as a way to create your own timeline.

Search History Articles

New Web Search History Timeline
Search Engine Watch Forums, July 27, 2004

Marketwatch.com releases a timeline of major events in the web search business dating back to 1995. Take a look back in time & discuss the changes of the industry here.

Search Wars: Battle Of The Search Superpowers
SearchDay, April 29, 2004

We’ve long had competition in search, so why are we hearing so much about the search wars now? Because the few left in the wake of the portal wars are embarking on a new quest to secure their destinies on the search front. A look at how and why the current situation erupted, one that will no doubt gain further attention in the wake of expected public financial releases from Google.

WWW-VL: History: W3 Search Engines
WWW-VL, April 2004

Recently revitalized, this entry of the WWW Virtual Library provides links and resources on the history and operation of web search engines.

The Search Engine Wars
NPR, April 12-16, 2004

Good, five-part radio series that you can listen to online explaining how we got to the current interest in search.

What’s In A (Search Engine’s) Name?
SearchDay, Oct. 9, 2003

What’s a Google? Should you be wary of Inktomi? Here’s a look at the origins and meanings of the major search engines’ names.

Online Before the Internet
SearchDay, July 7, 2003

Most people think the word ‘online’ means the Internet. But there was an ‘online’ before the Internet, and some early pioneers have published a fascinating account of creating the world that was the principal ancestor of the web.

SearchDay – Happy Birthday, Ask Jeeves!
SearchDay, April 8, 2003

Ask Jeeves, an online question answering service that has gradually morphed into a search engine, officially launched its site six years ago.

Happy Birthday, Dogpile!
SearchDay, Jan. 2, 2003

Dogpile, the meta search engine with the goofy name, opened its virtual door just after Christmas in 1996.

A Brief History of WebCrawler
Brian Pinkerton, 2001

A short but fascinating account of the history of the web’s first full-text search
engine, from WebCrawler creator Brian Pinkerton.

Happy Birthday, AltaVista!
SearchDay, Dec. 18, 2002

Seven years ago, Internet pioneer Digital Equipment Corporation introduced what they claimed was the Internet’s first “super spider” software, promising unprecedented “blazing fast” searches of the web.

Happy Birthday, Aliweb!
SearchDay, December 3, 2002

Aliweb, a pioneering web search engine that used advanced technologies way ahead of its time, made its debut nine years ago, on November 30, 1993.

Bigger and better: Internet search engines are continuing to evolve
Orange County Register, May 31, 2000
— no longer online —

Covers some of the search engines from the early days of the web. Anyone remember Gopher?

A History of Search Engines
Wes Sonnenreich, 1997

Covers the early days of search engines on the Internet.

Seek and Ye Shall Find (Maybe)
Wired, May 1996

Review of major services and technologies from the web’s earlier days.

Search Engine Timeline

I started the timeline below but ironically never had the time to finish it. Still, the early history may prove useful to some. Dates on the chart are in mm/dd/yy format.

Date Event
1993 The WWW Virtual Library, was seems to be the web’s first directory, is created by Tim Berners-Lee.
4/20/94 WebCrawler launches with information from 6,000 different web servers. It is a project by Brian Pinkerton, at the University of Washington.
May 1994 Lycos launches.
Oct. 1994 WebCrawler is serving 15,000 queries per day.
Late 1994 Yahoo launches.
early 1995 Infoseek launches.
3/29/95 AOL buys WebCrawler in March, and it moves from the University of Washington on this date.
3/5/95 Yahoo incorporated.
April 1995 Idea to create AltaVista first discussed at Digital.
April 1995 MetaCrawler created, but doesn’t open publicly until July 1995.
May 1995 SavvySearch metacrawler begins operating.
June 1995 AltaVista’s Scooter crawler begins trials
June 1995 Lycos applies for patent on its spidering technology.
7/4/95 AltaVista begins first major crawl.
July 7, 1995 MetaCrawler begins public operation.
late 1995 Excite launches.
12/15/95 AltaVista launches. It sets a new standard for number of pages crawled (currently 3 million per day), according to Brian Pinkerton.
Jan. 1996 WebCrawler replaces Magellan on Netscape Net Search page.
Feb. 1996 Lycos launches A2Z guide.
March 1996 Search.com launches.
March 1996 Yahooligans launches.
May 1996 HotBot launches.
June 1996 AltaVista partners with Yahoo, becomes preferred search engine used when a match is not found in the Yahoo catalog.
July 1996 Excite purchases Magellan.
8/4/96 Infoseek opens Infoseek Ultra to public beta test. Ultra is the first search engine to index web pages immediately after submission.
10/9/96 1st PC Computing Search Engine Challenge cancelled due to network problems. Excite and Infoseek play laser tag, instead. Excite wins.
10/28/96 LookSmart launches, backed by Reader’s Digest.
Nov. 1996 Excite acquires WebCrawler
11/14/96 Infoseek relaunches search service, merging Infoseek Ultra back into the service and using it for the basis of all searches. Two search modes are created: Ultrasmart and Ultraseek. Ultrasmart provides related material along with search results. Ultraseek provides only results in response to a query.
2/11/97 AltaVista launches LiveTopics search assistance feature.
3/3/97 Infoseek partners with CNN
3/3/97 Excite partners with Quote.Com to deliver stock quotes
3/10/97 Infoseek partners with Hoover’s Inc.
3/12/97 UPS adds button to home pages of Infoseek, Lycos and Yahoo to allow visitors to directly reach a package tracking form.
3/13/97 AOL launches AOL NetFind, its own branded-version of Excite
3/15/97 HotBot launches its SmartCrawl system, which will eventually index up to 10 million web pages per week. Competitors are in the 3 million web pages per week range.
3/19/97 Excite announces it will begin a channel-based format.
3/31/97 Lycos unveils a new look, along with a new slogan, “Get Lycos or get lost,” which is part of a rebranding campaign now underway. Content has been reorganized into subject areas, such as “news” and “sports.”
4/8/97 Infoseek and NBC announce partnership
4/15/97 Infoseek launches Corporate Information Division
4/21/97 Excite launches channels.
4/28/97 Excite and PointCast strike deal for Excite to index PointCast’s pushed content
4/29/97 Yahoo’s Netscape Guide by Yahoo debuts, replacing the Netscape Destinations page
4/29/97 WiseWire.com launches.
May 1997 Search.Com relaunches, partners with Infoseek to provide listings.
5/6/97 New Netscape Net Search page opens
5/9/97 2nd PC Computing Search Engine Challenge. HotBot won with 13 points. Excite came in a close second with 12 points, followed by AltaVista with 6 points and Infoseek with 4 points.
5/12/97 Excite launches chat service, Excite PAL, or Personal Access List.
5/15/97 Infoseek says those submitting pages via its Add URL page must agree to its new “Guidelines for Adding a Web Page.”
June 1996 LookSmart redesigns site, loses last vestiges of the Java interface it debuted with.
June 1996 Infoseek selects Deja News to provide newsgroup searching services.
6/1/97 Ask Jeeves metacrawler opens. It has been in beta testing since mid-April 1997.
6/6/97 Netscape submits Meta Content Framework using XML to W3C.
6/11/97 Excite announced Intuit is to invest $39 million for a 19% share of the company. Join content plans are also announced.
6/16/97 Lycos gives its Top 5% rating service a facelift and makes other changes.
6/16/97 WebCrawler relaunches with new look, the first major changes since Excite acquired the service.
6/16/97 Infoseek launches Industry Watch beta, a service monitoring more than 500 leading news sources in 20 different categories, such as banking and computers.
6/16/97 WebPosition, a software product to check page rankings, is released.
6/20/97 Digital announces that its AltaVista Internet Software division will not be spun off into a separate company.
6/23/97 Lycos launches Lycos Pro, a substantial new upgrade to its spider and searching service.
6/24/97 Infoseek promotes Dr. William I. Chang to chief technology officer and Arthur H. Clark as vice president of Business Development.
6/24/97 WiseWire enhances its service with a 2.0 release.
6/30/97 Excite-Intuit deal is approved and signed.
6/30/97 Excite and Ticketmaster teamed up, allowing users to find event listings and buy tickets from Excite’s services: Excite, WebCrawler, Magellan and Citi.Net.
7/8/97 Infoseek launches five new country or language-specific services: Infoseek Nederland, Infoseek Danmark, Infoseek Brasil, Infoseek Sverige and Infoseek en Espaqol (a worldwide Spanish service).
7/16/97 Excite, Infoseek, Lycos and Yahoo — along with CNET, announced they are going to work together to promote self-regulation of the Internet.
7/21/97 Excite launches free email service, MailExcite.
7/21/97 Excite announces that it will be producing the “International Netscape Guide by Excite” for Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Australia.
7/21/97 PC Meter renames itself to Media Matrix and announces plans to revise how it releases data. Search engines are top clients of PC Meter.
7/22/97 Excite and Apple have partnered to provide Mac OS 8 users a personalized gateway to the Internet from the Mac desktop.
7/23/97 Infoseek closes Corporate Information Division. It opened only a few months earlier, in April 1997.
7/23/97 Excite launches Japanese edition.
7/24/97 UKPlus launches redesign.
7/26/97 AltaVista launches redesign, integrating LiveTopics into the “Refine” button, displaying a cleaner interface and highlighting mirror sites across the globe.
7/29/97 Yahoo pays off Visa to get out of Marketplace site deal, freeing it to pursue other deals with retailers within the main site. The payoff causes a $20 million loss for what would have been a profitable (albeit small) quarter. A new deal with Visa is also announced.
Aug. 1997 HotBot adds instant Add URL feature, allowing submitted pages to be available within 48 hours.
Aug. 1997 HotBot changes names of NewBot to NewsBot, to better reflect the news-only search service’s function. The service also becomes an HTML service.
8/1/97 ScoreCheck position monitoring service launches.
8/4/97 Excite announced the hiring of James Desrosier as executive vice president, marketing. Previously, Desrosier was vice president, chief marketing officer at Infoseek.
8/12/97 Excite and WebTV renew partnership.
8/12/97 Northern Light search engine launches publicly. It is the first major search engine to begin crawling the web since the launch of HotBot back in May 1996.
8/12/97 Infoseek names Les Wright as new Chief Financial Officer.
8/13/97 InterNetGain position monitoring service launches.
8/20/97 Lycos and bookseller Barnes & Noble announce three-year positioning deal.
8/21/97 Infoseek unveils redesign.
8/26/97 News.Com reports Yahoo and CDnow are to sign partnership deal.
8/26/97 Lycos announced better than expected 4th quarter earnings, causing all search engine stocks to rise significantly.
Sept. 1997 WiseWire added the Netscape Net Search page
9/1/97 Yahoo Australia & NZ launched.
9/2/97 Excite launches new Shopping Channel on Sept. 2, along with an unprecedented guarantee to protect those making online purchases via the channel from credit card fraud.
9/9/97 Lycos selected to product Microsoft’s Active Channel Guide, an index of web sites delivering content via CDF.
9/10/97 Excite and Preview Travel expanded their previous partnership into 5-year deal to jointly produce an online travel service. Preview guarantees Excite $15 million of the course of the agreement.
9/15/97 WebCrawler debuts new channels, following the lead of sister search engine Excite. It also announces a 2-year partnership with bookseller Barnes & Noble. This follows a recent partnership formed in July between Excite and Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s chief competitor.
9/16/97 Lycos integrates Lycos Pro technology into main service.
9/18/97 Lycos launches a Belgium-edition of its service. Lycos Belgium is available in French and Dutch.
9/18/97 It becomes public that Ilene Lang, who was head of Digital’s AltaVista Internet Software division, left the company. She apparently resigned soon after Digital decided in June against spinning off the division into its own company.
10/1/97 HotBot debuts new look.
10/6/97 PositionAgent search engine monitoring service acquired by Submit It. PositionAgent was the first monitoring service to be offered commercially on the web, debuting in Feb. 1997.
10/7/97 GTE files suit against Yahoo, Netscape and Baby Bells alleging they are limiting Internet yellow pages competition after changes to the Netscape Guide.
10/8/97 Yahoo adds email service and announces it plans to acquire Four11.
10/8/97 Lycos adds chat and other new services.
10/9/97 Excite announced new retail partnerships, including those with CDNow and Auto-By-Tel
10/9/97 AltaVista announces positioning partnership with Amazon.
10/14/97 AltaVista increases index size to 100 million web pages, making it the largest search engine on the web.
10/15/97 Excite launches Business & Investing Channel, in conjunction with Intuit.
10/16/97 Excite signs an agreement to acquire NetBot, a shopping search service.
10/20/97 Microsoft announces partnership with Inktomi to create search engine.
10/20/97 Infoseek unveils channel format.
10/21/97 Microsoft and Yahoo announce agreement to redistribute Yahoo listings within MSN.com.
Nov. 1997 Lycos begins prelisting some of its own sites, though by December, it moves these suggestions out of the listings and into a more distinct area.
11/4/97 Yahoo announces Scandinavian editions.
11/24/97 Yahoo announces comparison shopping search service. Excite’s similar service launches two days later, on Nov. 26.
11/25/97 Yahoo debuts new search page results look. A more prominent page header directs people to related news stories, events, AltaVista results and web sites.
Dec. 97 WebCrawler stopped using retrieval technology from PLS and shifts over to using Excite’s own technology.
12/8/97 Yahoo hacked. Message warned visitors of fake virus attack.
12/8/97 AltaVista debuts new translation service.
12/11/97 HotBot announced that it now indexes more than 110 million web pages, making it the largest search engine. AltaVista remains a close second, at 100 million.
12/12/97 Yahoo hit by first scam based from its free email service.
12/29/97 AltaVista partnered with Switchboard to provide people and business searching services.
1/5/98 Yahoo invests $5 million in free web page provider GeoCities and announces cross-promotion agreement.
2/3/98 Lycos purchases community site Tripod.
2/3/98 devSearch.com, a search engine for web developers, launches. It is backed by the producters of Project Cool, l
2/7/98 AltaVista begins offering free email accounts, in association with i-Name.
2/10/98 HotBot adds a browsable directory of web sites to its service, a branded version of the LookSmart directory.
2/11/98 Excite launches “Netscape Guide by Excite UK,” the third international guide that it has produced for Netscape. It maintains similar ones for Japan and Germany.
2/21/98 Search engine GoTo debuts its new pay-for-placement service allowing web site owners to bid for placement. Those willing to pay more can appear higher in the search results.
2/23/98 Yahoo launches branded credit card in conjunction with Visa.
March 98 Compaq announces it will put one button access on its new computer keywords to help users reach search services.
3/9/98 Yahoo Launches Instant Messaging.
3/9/98 WebCrawler redesign lauched, debuting “friendlier” look.
3/30/98 AltaVista adds “Health Zone” tab, which leads to offsite information provided by one of its partners.
4/3/98 Study in Science gets headlines after reporting that search engines miss much of the web.
4/3/98 Yahoo begins beta test of new look for home page and within the site.
4/6/98 Infoseek unveils new result look, moving suggested topics and some partner links atop the raw search listings.
4/6/98 AltaVista announces $15 million deal making TheTrip.com its exclusive travel partner.
4/13/98 Yahoo posted a US $4.3 million quarterly profit, the largest to date for any search service.
4/13/98 Excite moves personalization to its home page, while Lycos launches revamped version of its personalized start page service.
4/23/98 Playboy loses first suit involving meta tags, a day after winning against an infringer.
4/26/98 Lycos unveils new design for results page, featuring matching Community Guide categories listed before raw search results.
4/30/98 Lycos announced that it acquired WiseWire for a $40 million stock swap. WiseWire uses agent technology to dynamically build web directories.
5/4/98 AT&T announces a partnership with Lycos to launch branded Internet access service. Similar agreements are announced on May 6 with Excite and May 8 with Infoseek
5/4/98 Excite announced $70 million deal to power Netscape search and produce content for Netscape’s Netcenter.
5/9/98 Yahoo unveils new look.
5/11/98 AltaVista begins listing Real Name addresses at the top of its search results.
5/18/98 Inktomi announced as Yahoo’s new partner for results when a search does not match Yahoo’s own listings.
6/8/98 Yahoo announces intent to purchase online mall provider Viaweb.
6/8/98 GoTo.com announces that Inktomi has taken over providing the non-paid results at its service. These previously came from the World Wide Web Worm crawler that GoTo.com acquired in 1997.
6/9/98 Yahoo launches Spanish-language service, Yahoo en espaqol.
6/9/98 NBC purchases a stake in Cnet’s Snap Directory.
6/9/98 Lycos announced it has been awarded a patent for its spidering technology.
6/11/98 Infoseek offers free web pages.
6/18/98 Disney acquires a large stake in Infoseek.
6/24/98 Disney launches DIG: Disney Internet Guide, a directory designed for kids.
6/29/98 Alexa 2.0 available for Internet Explorer 4.
6/29/98 Lycos announces SafetyNet filtering feature.
6/30/98 Netscape launches revamped Netcenter guide.
7/1/98 RealNames increases registration fee from $40 to $100 per year.
8/5/98 Lycos announced that it has received a patent for its WiseWire technology that builds directory listings automatically.
8/5/98 Snap introduces personalized services.
8/11/98 AltaVista announces it has reached an agreement to acquire the altavista.com domain. Financial terms were not disclosed, but press reports have put the sale amount at over $3 million.
8/11/98 Lycos acquires WhoWhere, a free home page and email provider that also powers the free branded email service of Lycos-competitor Excite.
8/17/98 Excite debuts beta test of new community service, and Yahoo follows suit the next day. The idea behind both services is to allow users to create “communities” or identity areas that revolve around a particular topic. For example, a community might focus on a family, a business or even a television show.
8/19/98 The Direct Hit ranking system debuts on HotBot.
9/1/98 Inktomi agrees to purchase C2B Technologies, which develops comparison shopping software, for a $90 million stock swap. Inktomi plans to use the acquired technology to create a shopping search service that it can offer to its partners.
9/8/98 Microsoft unveils its Inktomi-powered search service, MSN Internet Search.
9/21/98 Microsoft announces new partnerships for its search page.
9/22/98 Infoseek releases metasearch software.
9/23/98 Infoseek unveils new look to web site and search results.
9/29/98 AltaVista’s Northern European mirror site is discontinued.
9/29/98 HotBot debuts new look.
9/29/98 RealNames and LookSmart announce that the RealNames service will be integrated into LookSmart in October 1998.
10/6/98 AltaVista begins unannounced partnership with answer search engine Ask Jeeves. Selected answers from Ask Jeeves now appear above search results, prefaced by the phrase, “AltaVista knows the answers to these questions.”
10/6/98 Lycos announces that it is to acquire Wired Digital, owner of HotBot.
11/2/98 Netscape begin trial of Direct Hit.
11/18/98 Netscape acquires the NewHoo directory.
11/24/98 AOL announces it will purchase Netscape in a $4 billion stock swap, with the online company taking over Netscape’s portal site and browser operations, and Sun taking over Netscape’s business software operations.
12/8/98 AltaVista begins displaying a “related searches” option below the search box on results pages. These present alternative queries containing the main search terms.
12/13/98 The new Go portal from Disney and Infoseek is made available as a beta preview.

January 1999

  • The new Go site formally opens and the Infoseek site is given a new address in conjunction with the change.
  • @Home, the broadband internet access provider, announces it will acquire Excite in a $6.7 billion stock swap.
  • Netscape launches a branded version of the former NewHoo directory.
  • Direct Hit announces the availability of personalized search results. LookSmart also announced as the company’s newest partner to use its popularity engine results.
  • Compaq announces that AltaVista will be spun-off into a separate company, the AltaVista Company and that the service is to work closely with Microsoft on several portal offerings. AltaVista is to use Microsoft’s Hotmail service to power its free email offering. Microsoft is to use AltaVista as the primary search service powering MSN Search. It will replace Inktomi in this role.
  • Yahoo announces it is to purchase GeoCities.
  • Excite is sued by Estie Lauder for selling banner ads using Estie Lauder trademarks to a competing fragrance company

February 1999

  • Microsoft announced that it will integrate LookSmart directory listings into its MSN Search results.
  • It’s announced that Lycos will be purchased by USA Network, owner of the Home Shopping Network and Ticketmaster-Citysearch.
  • Yahoo introduced a $199 express listing request service. The service doesn’t guarantee that a site will be listed, but it does assure that a site will be reviewed and given a yes or no response within 7 days.
  • Compaq announces it will purchase Zip2, which specializes in creating local portals for media partners such as newspapers. Compaq hopes the purchase will help its e-commerce goals for AltaVista.
  • GoTo.com sues the Go Network, alleging that the Go Network logo is too similar to GoTo’s own logo.
  • HotBot’s top results begin coming from the Direct Hit’s popularity ranking system by default, rather than this being an alternative choice available to users.

April 1999

  • Yahoo announces its to acquire online audio/video company Broadcast.com in a $5.7 billion stock swap.
  • AltaVista introduces a pay for placement program. Rumors of the program emerged over a week earlier, and delays in releasing public details of the plan hurt the service’s reputation.
  • Lycos and HotBot both add editor-compiled results originating from the Open Directory. In particular, Lycos implements these in such a way that it essentially transforms the service from a search engine and into a Yahoo-like directory.

May 1999

  • A new search engine from FAST and Dell is launched with the aim to have the largest index of the web.
  • NBC forms a new company, NBC Interactive, which uses Snap as the basis to integrate material from Snap, Xoom and NBC’s own content.
  • The Lycos-USA Networks deal falls through.
  • Infoseek introduced search term highlighting, a related searches prompter, and increases its index size to about 70 million web pages.
  • Excite announces it will end its cobranding deal with Netscape.

June 1999

  • Infoseek announces it will add RealNames to its search results.
  • Lycos launches an index of search databases to help users find information ordinarily invisible to normal search engines.
  • Inktomi is named to take over from Excite in powering AOL NetFind.
  • Inktomi announces a new product that creates Yahoo-like directories of web sites automatically.
  • Snap has announced a deal with GlobalBrain to make use of personalized results technology.
  • Netscape launches a revamped Netscape Search service that uses information from the Open Directory and technology from Google.
  • RealNames are announced to be integrated into MSN Search and Internet Explorer Autosearch results by the third quarter 1999.
  • AltaVista announces new plans and features for its service, including a “Search Freshness” guarantee.
  • CMGI purchases 83 percent of AltaVista in a $2.3 billion deal.
  • AltaVista opened its paid placement program to the general public.

July 1999

  • A new study published in Nature on search engine sizes verifies Northern Light’s claim to having the largest index of the web.
  • Direct Hit announced to begin refining the Open Directory listings at Lycos and appears in a “Top 10” button model at MSN Search.
  • Infoseek announced to be completely acquired by Disney and merged into a new company called Go.com.
  • AltaVista announces that it will discontinue its paid links program, telling advertisers in an email, “After several months of evaluation and feedback, we believe, in general, this program does not meet the needs of the majority of our advertising partners.”

August 1999

  • FAST Search announces it has a 200 million page index now online, making it the largest search engine based on self-reported numbers.
  • Business Week reports that Yahoo has been in talks to purchase Excite@Home, while Excite@Home president George Bell flatly denies the rumor.
  • Excite announces that it will unveil a large index in the 250 million page range later this month, combined with new intelligence intended to increase relevancy.
  • Excite announces it is to begin using LookSmart information for its directory.
  • AOL NetFind results change to being powered by Inktomi.
  • Go (Infoseek) integrates RealNames into the top of its search results.
  • MSN Search unveils a new beta site that makes use of RealNames, LookSmart and AltaVista data. Direct Hit information is also offered.

September 1999

  • The new AOL Search comes out of beta and taken over from the old AOL NetFind service.
  • The new, non-beta version of Google goes live.
  • The United States Federal Trade Commission successfully obtains a preliminary injunction against a company accused of stealing other people’s high-ranking pages and submitting them to search engines in hopes of misleading consumers and capturing traffic. This is the first time a government agency has intervened in such a dispute.

October 1999

  • With great fanfare, AltaVista relaunches under the ownership of CMGI as its challenger against more established portals such as Yahoo, Excite and Lycos.
  • MSN Search begins featuring Direct Hit links more prominently than since its relaunch.
  • iWon Launches

November 1999

  • Problems with AltaVista’s index in the wake of its recent launch leave some webmasters upset.
  • Snap member-based LiveDirectory service
  • Alexa Releases Amazon Shopping Tool
  • Google begins running text banner ads
  • GoTo.com wins a preliminary injunction against Go regarding the Go logo.

December 1999

  • MSN Search shifts back to using Inktomi information for the “Web Pages” section of its results. MSN had dropped Inktomi earlier this year, after a major deal was cut with AltaVista.
  • RealNames Temporarily Suspends Registration Of Generics
  • Longer Domain Names Introduced
  • Moreover news search service launched.

Beyond The Search Engine Timeline

For a further guide to dates beyond those in the search engine timeline above, I recommend viewing the various archive pages in Search Engine Watch. They show newsletter articles and blog posts that have been written in chronological order. The latest articles are shown at the top, and then links at the bottom let you drill down by month or year.

Resources

The 2023 B2B Superpowers Index

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Data Analytics in Marketing

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The Third-Party Data Deprecation Playbook

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Utilizing Email To Stop Fraud-eCommerce Client Fraud Case Study

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