Archie is the first search engine in the world, created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, a student at McGill University in Montreal.
Archie is short for "Archives" but the programmer had to conform to UNIX standards of short names.The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, creating a search able database of filenames.
The first few hundred web sites began in 1993 and most of them were at colleges, but long before most of them existed came Archie. Archie helped solve this data scatter problem by combining a script-based data gatherer with a regular expression matcher for retrieving file names matching a user query. Essentially Archie became a database of web filenames which it would match with the users queries.
While Archie indexed computer files, "Gopher" indexed plain text documents. Gopher was created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota. (The program was named after the school's mascot). Because these were text files, most of the Gopher sites became Web sites after the creation of the World Wide Web.
Two other programs, "Veronica" and "Jughead," searched the files stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead (Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy excavation And Display) was a tool for obtaining menu information from various Gopher servers.
Search Engines Historical Time line
2009
* 2009-07-29 - Microsoft, Yahoo! Change Search Landscape
(For users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry, Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience. Its simple to understand that Microsoft will now power Yahoo!-search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.)
2007
* 2007 June - Google Acquisitions
2006
* 2006 January - Google launches Google Video
* 2006 February - SE traffic 5.1 billion searches per month
* 2006 February - Teoma/Ask.com The Butler is gone
* 2006 March - Zeal Directory discontinued
* 2006 March - Google acquires Writely.com
* 2006 March - Google launches Google Mars
* 2006 March - Google joins the S&P 500 Index
* 2006 April - Yahoo! launches FairChase Travel
* 2006 August - Google launches Writely Beta
* 2006 August - Danny Sullivan resigning from SEW
* 2006 September - MSN launches Live Search
2005
* 2005 January - AOL Search Relaunches
* 2005 January - Gigablast Index Size 1,000,000,000+
* 2005 March - Overture Renamed Yahoo! SMS
* 2005 March - Yahoo! Celebrates 10th Anniversary
* 2005 March - IAC/InterActiveCorp acquires AskJeeves
* 2005 May - AskJeeves acquires Excite Europe
* 2005 June - Corey Rudl dies at age 34
* 2005 August - Incisive acquires SearchEngineWatch
* 2005 August - MSN acquires Teleo (VoIP)
* 2005 September - Google offers free WiFi to San Francisco
* 2005 October - Google launches Google Local
* 2005 December - AOL acquires Truveo
2004
* 2004 January - New MSN Search BETA
* 2004 February - Lycos Communities discontinued
* 2004 February - Lycos Search discontinued
* 2004 February - Yahoo! Web Search powered by Yahoo!
* 2004 March - Yahoo! Site Match™ powered by Overture
* 2004 March - AskJeeves acquires Excite, iWon, My Way
* 2004 March - AlltheWeb switches to Yahoo! Search
* 2004 March - Yahoo! Toolbar with WebRank
* 2004 March - Google Gmail free email service
* 2004 March - AltaVista switches to Yahoo! Search
* 2004 June - Google invests in Baidu Search China
* 2004 June - AskJeeves acquires Tukaroo Search
* 2004 June - Yahoo! launches Yisou.com China
* 2004 June - AOL acquires Advertising.com
* 2004 June - New MSN Search Technology Preview
* 2004 August 19 - Google IPO GOOG NASDAQ
* 2004 August - Yahoo! launches Local Search Engine
* 2004 September - Amazon launches A9.com Search
* 2004 November - Google Index Size 8,058,044,651
* 2004 November - New MSN Search
2003
* 2003 March - Yahoo! acquires Inktomi
* 2003 April - Overture acquires Fast/AlltheWeb
* 2003 April - Overture acquires AltaVista
* 2003 April - Google acquires Applied Semantics
* 2003 April - FindWhat acquires Espotting
* 2003 June - Google AdSense
* 2003 July - Yahoo! to buy Overture
* 2003 October - Yahoo! acquires Overture
* 2003 October - Google acquires Sprinks
2002
* 2002 February - Google AdWords Select
* 2002 March - Gigablast Pre-Beta
* 2002 March - LookSmart acquires WiseNut
* 2002 July - Gigablast Beta
* 2002 December - Froogle
2001
* 2001 October - GoTo changes name to Overture
* 2001 September - AskJeeves acquires Teoma
* 2001 Sepetember - WiseNut
* 2001 August - LookSmart integrates Zeal
* 2001 May - JoeAnt
* 2001 April - Teoma
* 2001 February - GoGuides
* 2001 February - Google acquires Deja Archive
2000
* 2000 May - Terra acquires Lycos
* 2000 June - Yahoo! Web Search powered by Google
* 2000 June - Vivisimo
* 2000 September - Business.com
* 2000 September - Espotting
* 2000 September - LookSmart acquires Zeal Media
* 2000 October - Google AdWords
* 2000 December - Google Toolbar
1999
* 1999 January - At Home acquires Excite
* 1999 February - GO Network
* 1999 June - CMGI acquires AltaVista
* 1999 July - Disney acquires Infoseek
* 1999 August - AlltheWeb
* 1999 September - FindWhat
* 1999 November - NBCi/Snap
* About.com
1998
* 1998 April - Direct Hit
* 1998 May - Yahoo! Web Search powered by Inktomi
* 1998 June - ODP/DMOZ
* 1998 September - MSN Search
* 1998 September - Google
* 1998 October - Lycos acquires HotBot
* GoTo acquires WWW Worm
1997
* 1997 February - The Mining Company
* 1997 April - AskJeeves
* 1997 July - FAST Search
* 1997 August - Northern Light
* GoTo
1996
* 1996 January - BackRub
* 1996 April - Alexa
* 1996 May - HotBot
* 1996 June - Archive.org
* 1996 October - LookSmart
* Dogpile
* Mamma
1995
* 1995 February - Infoseek
* 1995 May - SavvySearch
* 1995 June - MetaCrawler
* 1995 August - DejaNews
* 1995 August - Magellan
* 1995 September - Inktomi
* 1995 October - Excite
* 1995 December - AltaVista
1994
* 1994 April - WebCrawler
* 1994 April - Yahoo!
* 1994 July - Lycos
* 1994 December - First W3C meeting at MIT
1993
* 1993 February - Architext
* 1993 March - First email message sent by Bill Clinton
* 1993 March - Jughead
* 1993 June - WWW Wanderer
* 1993 August - Mosaic Web Browser
* 1993 November - Aliweb
* 1993 December - WWW Worm
* 1993 December - JumpStation
* 1993 December - RBSE
1992
* 1992 July - Lynx Web Browser
* 1992 December - Veronica
1991
* 1991 April - Gopher
* 1991 April - WAIS publisher fed search engine
* 1991 May - WWW Server Production
1990
* 1990 December - WWW Server Prototype
* Archie