Part 1: The History of the Search Engine from 1994-1998

The history of the search engine began in 1994 when a couple of students from Stanford University, Jerry Wang and David Filo, created Yahoo as a directory of interesting sites on the Internet. It was a manually curated list where webmasters had to submit their pages for indexing. This was the first search engine of its kind, and it quickly gained popularity as the Internet began to expand rapidly.

In 1996, other search engines began to emerge, such as AltaVista, Excite, and Lycos. These search engines used automated methods to index web pages, making it easier for users to find the information they were looking for. However, the search results were not always relevant or accurate. It was during this time that two other Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, were working on a new search engine called Backrub. This search engine used a new ranking algorithm that considered the relevance and popularity of web pages based on inbound links. This was a major breakthrough in the search industry and laid the foundation for the search engine we know today as Google.

In 1997, Danny Sullivan launched Search Engine Watch, a website dedicated to providing news and tips about the search industry and how to rank websites better. This helped webmasters and marketers to understand how search engines worked and how they could optimize their websites to rank higher in search results.

In 1998, Ask Jeeves debuted, offering a natural language-based search experience, which allowed users to ask questions in a conversational way. Google.com domain was also registered by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The history of the search engine from 1994 to 1998 was marked by the emergence of new search engines and the development of new ranking algorithms. These advancements laid the foundation for the search engine industry we know today and paved the way for the development of more advanced and sophisticated search technologies.