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==History==
{|class="bordered infobox"
|-
! colspan = "3" | Timeline
|-
| colspan = "3" | Note:  "Launch" refers only to web <br>availability of original crawl-based<br> web search engine results. For full-list: [[List of search engines]]
|-
!|Year 
!|Engine
!|Event
|-
||1993
||[[Aliweb]]
||Launch
|-
| rowspan="3" |1994
||[[WebCrawler]]
||Launch
|-
||[[Infoseek]]
||Launch
|-
||[[Lycos]]
||Launch
|-
| rowspan="4" |1995
||[[AltaVista]]
||Launch (part of [[Digital Equipment Corporation|DEC]])
|-
||[[Magellan]]
||Launch (The McKinley Group)
|-
||[[Excite]]
||Launch
|-
||[[SAPO]]
||Launch
|-
| rowspan="4" |1996
||[[Dogpile]]
||Launch
|-
||[[Inktomi]]
||Founded
|-
||[[HotBot]]
||Founded
|-
||[[Ask Jeeves]]
||Founded
|-
| rowspan="2" |1997
||[[Northern Light Group|Northern Light]]
||Launch
|-
||[[Yandex|Yandex]]
||Launch
|-
||1998
||[[Google Search|Google]]
||Launch
|-
|rowspan="4"|1999
||[[AlltheWeb]]
||Launch
|-
||[[Naver]]
||Launch
|-
||[[Teoma]]
||Founded
|-
||[[Vivisimo]]
||Founded
|-
|rowspan="1"|2000
||[[Baidu]]
||Founded
|-
|rowspan="1"|2003
||[[Info.com]]
||Launch
|-
| rowspan="2" |2004
||[[Yahoo! Search]]
||Final launch
|-
||[[A9.com]]
||Launch
|-
| rowspan="3" |2005
||[[MSN Search]]
||Final launch
|-
||[[Ask.com]]
|| Launch
|-
||[[GoodSearch]]
|| Launch
|-
| rowspan= "6" |2006
||[[wikiseek]]
||Founded
|-
||[[Quaero]]
||Founded
|-
||[[Ask.com]]
|| Launch
|-
|| [[Live Search]]
||Launch
|-
|| [[ChaCha (search engine)|ChaCha]]
|| Beta Launch
|-
||[[Guruji.com]]
||Beta Launch
|-
| rowspan= "2" |2007
||[[wikiseek]]
||Launched
|-
||[[Wikia Search]]
||Launched
|-
| rowspan= "1" |2008
||[[Cuil]]
||Launched
|}
Before there were search engines there was a complete list of all webservers. The list was edited by [[Tim Berners-Lee]] and hosted on the CERN webserver. One historical snapshot from 1992 remains<ref>http://www.w3.org/History/19921103-hypertext/hypertext/DataSources/WWW/Servers.html</ref>. As more and more webservers went online the central list could not keep up. On the NCSA Site new servers were announced under the title "What's New!", but no complete listing existed any more<ref>http://home.mcom.com/home/whatsnew/whats_new_0294.html</ref>.

The very first tool used for searching on the (pre-web) Internet was [[Archie search engine|Archie]].<ref name=LeidenUnivSE>
     "Internet History - Search Engines" (from [[Search Engine Watch]]),
     Universiteit Leiden, Netherlands, September 2001, web:
     [http://www.internethistory.leidenuniv.nl/index.php3?c=7 LeidenU-Archie].
</ref>
The name stands for "archive" without the "v".  It was created in 1990 by [[Alan Emtage]], a student at [[McGill University]] in Montreal. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP ([[File Transfer Protocol]]) sites, creating a searchable database of file names; however, Archie did not index the contents of these sites.

The rise of [[Gopher (protocol)|Gopher]] (created in 1991 by [[Mark McCahill]] at the [[University of Minnesota]]) led to two new search programs, [[Veronica (computer)|Veronica]] and [[Jughead (computer)|Jughead]]. Like Archie, they searched the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica ('''V'''ery '''E'''asy '''R'''odent-'''O'''riented '''N'''et-wide '''I'''ndex to '''C'''omputerized '''A'''rchives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead ('''J'''onzy's '''U'''niversal '''G'''opher '''H'''ierarchy '''E'''xcavation '''A'''nd '''D'''isplay) was a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers.  While the name of the search engine "[[Archie search engine|Archie]]" was not a reference to the [[Archie Comics|Archie comic book]] series, "[[Veronica Lodge|Veronica]]" and "[[Jughead Jones|Jughead]]" are characters in the series, thus referencing their predecessor. 

The first Web search engine was Wandex, a now-defunct index collected by the [[World Wide Web Wanderer]], a [[web crawler]] developed by Matthew Gray at [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology|MIT]] in 1993.  Another very early search engine, [[Aliweb]], also appeared in 1993.  [[JumpStation]] (released in early 1994) used a crawler to find web pages for searching, but search was limited to the title of web pages only. One of the first "full text" crawler-based search engines was [[WebCrawler]], which came out in 1994.  Unlike its predecessors, it let users search for any word in any webpage, which became the standard for all major search engines since.  It was also the first one to be widely known by the public.  Also in 1994 [[Lycos]] (which started at [[Carnegie Mellon University]]) was launched, and became a major commercial endeavor. 

Soon after, many search engines appeared and vied for popularity. These included [[Magellan]], [[Excite]], [[Infoseek]], [[Inktomi]], [[Northern Light Group|Northern Light]], and [[AltaVista]]. [[Yahoo!]] was among the most popular ways for people to find web pages of interest, but its search function operated on its [[web directory]], rather than full-text copies of web pages.  Information seekers could also browse the directory instead of doing a keyword-based search.

In 1996, [[Netscape]] was looking to give a single search engine an exclusive deal to be their featured search engine. There was so much interest that instead a deal was struck with Netscape by 5 of the major search engines, where for $5Million per year each search engine would be in a rotation on the Netscape search engine page.  These five engines were: [[Yahoo!]], [[Magellan]], [[Lycos]], [[Infoseek]] and [[Excite]].

Search engines were also known as some of the brightest stars in the Internet investing frenzy that occurred in the late 1990s.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Gandal |first=Neil |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=2001 |month= |title=The dynamics of competition in the internet search engine market |journal=International Journal of Industrial Organization |volume=19 |issue=7 |pages=1103â€“1117 |doi=10.1016/S0167-7187(01)00065-0  |url= |accessdate= |quote= }}</ref> Several companies entered the market spectacularly, receiving record gains during their [[initial public offering]]s. Some have taken down their public search engine, and are marketing enterprise-only editions, such as Northern Light.  Many search engine companies were caught up in the [[dot-com bubble]], a speculation-driven market boom that peaked in 1999 and ended in 2001.

Around 2000, the [[Google Search|Google search engine]] rose to prominence.{{Fact|date=February 2008}}  The company achieved better results for many searches with an innovation called [[PageRank]].  This iterative algorithm ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other web sites and pages that link there, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others.  Google also maintained a minimalist interface to its search engine. In contrast, many of its competitors embedded a search engine in a [[web portal]].

By 2000, Yahoo was providing search services based on [[Inktomi]]'s search engine. Yahoo! acquired [[Inktomi]] in 2002, and [[Overture]] (which owned [[AlltheWeb]] and [[AltaVista]]) in 2003.  Yahoo! switched to Google's search engine until 2004, when it launched its own search engine based on the combined technologies of its acquisitions.

Microsoft first launched MSN Search (since re-branded [[Live Search]]) in the fall of 1998 using search results from [[Inktomi]].  In early 1999 the site began to display listings from [[Looksmart]] blended with results from [[Inktomi]] except for a short time in 1999 when results from [[AltaVista]] were used instead.  In 2004, Microsoft began a transition to its own search technology, powered by its own [[web crawler]] (called [[msnbot]]).

As of late 2007, Google was by far the most popular Web search engine worldwide.<ref>[http://searchengineland.com/070921-105613.php Nielsen NetRatings: August 2007 Search Share Puts Google On Top, Microsoft Holding Gains], ''SearchEngineLand'', September 21, 2007</ref>
<ref>[http://searchengineland.com/071010-192830.php comScore: August 2007 Google Top Worldwide Search Engine; Baidu Beats Microsoft]</ref>  A number of country-specific search engine companies have become prominent; for example [[Baidu]] is the most popular search engine in the [[People's Republic of China]] and [[guruji.com]] in [[India]].<ref>{{cite web| url=http://moneycentral.msn.com/investor/research/profile.asp?Symbol=BIDU| title=MSN Money - BIDU| publisher=MSN Money| accessdate=2006-05-11}}</ref>

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