The History of the Search Engine

Any one using the internet has used a search engine at some point. We sometimes complain about the results we find or problems with the world wide web. After taking a look back on where the internet and search engines were forty years ago, users can see how much they take today's technology for granted. The advancements have been amazing and are continuing every day. Hopefully, the below history and evolution of search engine methodologies will give users a little insight into how search engines developed, the current competition, and how search engines actually work.

Before looking into the history of the search engine, perhaps one should understand exactly what a search engine is. In the most basic sense, a search engine takes a keyword or phrase and searches their database of billions of websites to find relevant results. Each search engine is different based upon what spider, a software program that automatically searches the internet for updated information, it uses.

Search engines are today's version of the card catalog. Believe it or not, the idea of search engines actually began in 1945 when Vannaver Bush published As We May Think, which implored scientists to construct a body of knowledge for the entire world to use. He believed highly that in order to use information, it must be continuously updated.

Project Xandu was created in 1960 by Ted Nelson. Nelson was also the one to coin the term hypertext in 1963. Project Xandu's purpose was to create a computer network with with a simple user interface. Thanks to Nelson's work, people were inspired to create the WWW, or world wide web. Even though he did not believe in the complex markup code, many concepts of today's internet are based upon his early work.