WebCrawler is a
search engine
A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
, and one of the oldest surviving search engines on the web today. For many years, it operated as a
metasearch engine
A metasearch engine (or search aggregator) is an online information retrieval tool that uses the data of a web search engine to produce its own results. Metasearch engines take input from a user and immediately query search engines for results. S ...
. WebCrawler was the first web search engine to provide full text search.
History
Brian Pinkerton first started working on WebCrawler, which was originally a desktop application, on January 27, 1994 at the
University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...
.
On March 15, 1994, he generated a list of the top 25 websites.
WebCrawler launched on April 21, 1994, with more than 4,000 different websites in its database
and on November 14, 1994, WebCrawler served its 1 millionth search query
for "nuclear weapons design and research".
On December 1, 1994, WebCrawler acquired two sponsors,
DealerNet and
Starwave
Starwave was a Seattle, Washington-based software and website company, founded in 1993 by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft and led by CEO Mike Slade. The company produced original CD-ROM titles, including ''Muppets Inside'', and titles for ...
, which provided money to keep WebCrawler operating.
Starting on October 3, 1995, WebCrawler was fully supported by advertising, but separated the adverts from search results.
On June 1, 1995,
America Online
AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
(AOL) acquired WebCrawler.
After being acquired by AOL, the website introduced its mascot "Spidey" on September 1, 1995.
Starting in April 1996,
WebCrawler also included the human-edited internet guide
GNN Select, which was also under AOL ownership.
On April 1, 1997,
Excite
Excitation, excite, exciting, or excitement may refer to:
* Excitation (magnetic), provided with an electrical generator or alternator
* Excite Ballpark, located in San Jose, California
* Excite (web portal), web portal owned by IAC
* Electron ex ...
acquired WebCrawler from AOL for $12.3 million.
WebCrawler received a redesign on June 16, 1997, adding WebCrawler Shortcuts, which suggested alternative links to material related to a search topic.
WebCrawler was maintained by Excite as a separate search engine with its own database until 2001, when it started using Excite's own database, effectively putting an end to WebCrawler as an independent search engine. Later that year, Excite (then called
Excite@Home
@Home Network was a high-speed cable Internet service provider from 1996 to 2002. It was founded by Milo Medin, cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), Comcast, and Cox Communications, and William Randolph Hearst III, who was their f ...
) went bankrupt and WebCrawler was bought by
InfoSpace
Infospace, Inc. was an American company that offered private label search engine, online directory, and provider of metadata feeds. The company's flagship metasearch site was Dogpile and its other notable consumer brands were WebCrawler and Met ...
in 2001.
Pinkerton, WebCrawler's creator, led the Amazon
A9.com
A9.com is a former subsidiary of Amazon that develops search engine and search advertising technology. A9 is based in Palo Alto, California, with teams in Seattle, Bangalore, Beijing, Dublin, Iași, Munich and Tokyo. A9 has development effo ...
search division as of 2012.
In July 2016, InfoSpace was sold by parent company Blucora to OpenMail for $45 million, putting WebCrawler under the ownership of OpenMail. OpenMail was later renamed System1.
In 2018, WebCrawler was redesigned from scratch and the logo of the search engine was changed.
Traffic
WebCrawler was highly successful early on. At one point, it was unusable during peak times due to server overload. It was the second most visited website on the internet in February 1996, but it quickly dropped below rival search engines and directories such as
Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
,
Infoseek
Infoseek (also known as the "big yellow") was an American internet search engine founded in 1994 by Steve Kirsch.
Infoseek was originally operated by the Infoseek Corporation, headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. Infoseek was bought by The Wa ...
,
Lycos
Lycos, Inc., is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company is based in Walth ...
, and
Excite
Excitation, excite, exciting, or excitement may refer to:
* Excitation (magnetic), provided with an electrical generator or alternator
* Excite Ballpark, located in San Jose, California
* Excite (web portal), web portal owned by IAC
* Electron ex ...
in 1997.
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Webcrawler
Internet search engines
Metasearch engines
Internet properties established in 1994
pl:WebCrawler