1. By: Shahein Moussavi

2. A search engine is essentially an algorithm, designed to recognize keywords and rank pages based on their relevance and importance to the keyword(s).

3. The first WWW search engine was called Wandex, launched in 1993. It is no longer running, so some refer to Aliweb (launched around the same time, and still running) as the first. Google, the worlds most popular seach engine (by far), was first launched in 1997. It became the company it is today (Google, Inc) in September 1998.

4. At first, Yahoo! used Googles search technology on their website. Only recently (2004) did Yahoo! finalize Yahoo! Search. Other once-popular search engine web pages include Magellan, Excite, Lycos, and Dogpile, all launched between 1994-1996. While they are still used by some, they are no longer ranked in the top ten in market share. Microsofts LiveSearch search engine, launched in 2006, is rising in competition with the annual favorites, Google and Yahoo!.

5. Search engines make money mainly from advertising. Google holds somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of the market share, with the closest runner-up, Yahoo!, holding around 20%.

6. Simplicity plays a large part in the popularity of a search engine. Google, Yahoo!, and LiveSearch all use simple and easy-to-read search results pages.

7. Google, in December 2007 alone, had about 28,500,000,000 searches take place on its site. Alibaba.com, ranked tenth in market share, had about 531,000,000 searches in Dec. 2007 as well. So…Everyone!!!

8. While Google is worldwide the most popular of all search engines, many country-specific engines are very popular in their respective countries. For example, Baidu, the most popular search engine in the Peoples Republic of China, is third in market share worldwide.

9. Using an algorithm to sort through the millions of websites worldwide, a search engine files the results based on keywords typed in by the user. Googles PageRank, uses votes from the pages themselves, combined with text- matching techniques, to yield the most important and relevant results possible. Earlier search engines cross-referenced keywords with the number of times the word appeared on the page to yield the results.

11. www.google.com/technology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_search