WebCrawler

WebCrawler is a web search engine, and is the oldest surviving search engine on the web today. For many years, it operated as a metasearch engine. WebCrawler was the first web search engine to provide full text search.[2]

This article is about the search engine. For web crawling programs in general, see web crawler.

WebCrawler
Logo since 2018
Type of site
Web search engine
Available inEnglish
OwnerSystem1
Created byBrian Pinkerton
URLwww.webcrawler.com
Alexa rank 3,211 (September 2019)[1]
CommercialNo
Registrationnone
LaunchedApril 20, 1994 (1994-04-20)
Current statusActive

History
Screenshot of WebCrawler homepage in September 1995

Brian Pinkerton first started working on WebCrawler, which was originally a desktop application, on January 27, 1994 at the University of Washington.[3] On March 15, 1994, he generated a list of the top 25 websites.[2]

WebCrawler launched on April 21, 1994, with more than 4,000 different websites in its database[3] and on November 14, 1994, WebCrawler served its 1 millionth search query[3] for "nuclear weapons design and research".[4]

On December 1, 1994, WebCrawler acquired two sponsors, DealerNet and Starwave, which provided money to keep WebCrawler operating.[3] Starting on October 3, 1995, WebCrawler was fully supported by advertising, but separated the adverts from search results.[3]

On June 1, 1995, America Online (AOL) acquired WebCrawler.[3] After being acquired by AOL, the website introduced its mascot "Spidey" on September 1, 1995.[3]

Starting in April 1996,[3] WebCrawler also included the human-edited internet guide GNN Select, which was also under AOL ownership.[5][6]

On April 1, 1997, Excite acquired WebCrawler from AOL for $12.3 million.[3][7]

WebCrawler received a facelift on June 16, 1997, adding WebCrawler Shortcuts, which suggested alternative links to material related to a search topic.[8]

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.[9] Later that year, Excite (then called Excite@Home) went bankrupt and WebCrawler was bought by InfoSpace in 2001.[3]

WebCrawler's homepage (June 2010)

Pinkerton, WebCrawler's creator, led the Amazon A9.com search division as of 2012.[10][11]

In July 2016, Blucora announced the sale of its InfoSpace business to OpenMail for $45 million, putting WebCrawler under the ownership of OpenMail.[12] OpenMail was later renamed System1.[13]

In 2018, WebCrawler received another facelift and the logo of the search engine was changed.[14][15]

Traffic

WebCrawler was highly successful early on.[16] In fact, at one point, it was unusable during peak times due to server overload.[17] It was the second most visited website on the internet as of February 1996, but it quickly dropped below rival search engines and directories such as Yahoo!, Infoseek, Lycos, and Excite by 1997.[18]

gollark: Somewhat late: I'm relatively sure diamonds or diamond-like things are possible to manufacture artificially *anyway*.
gollark: Nobody ever continues my naming schemes, except for two out of what, 453?
gollark: `I couldn't think of a name` / `so I just wrote this` could work on a pair of dragons...
gollark: `I Asked People For Names and Just Got This Lousy One`
gollark: I had a good one but it was too long...

See also

References
  1. "Webcrawler.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 2019-09-24.
  2. "Short History of Early Search Engines". The History of SEO. Retrieved 2019-02-03.
  3. "WebCrawler's History". www.thinkpink.com. Archived from the original on 2000-12-18. Retrieved 2019-01-09.
  4. Lammle, Rob (2012-03-16). "'90s Tech Icons: Where Are They Now?". Mashable. Archived from the original on 2012-03-17. Retrieved 2019-02-18.
  5. "Se-En". searchenginearchive.com. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  6. "WebCrawler Select: Review Categories". WebCrawler. 1996-10-24. Retrieved 2019-02-03.
  7. Keogh, Garret. "Excite buys WebCrawler from AOL". ZDNet. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
  8. Sullivan, Danny (1997-06-16). "The Search Engine Update, June 17, 1997, Number 7". Search Engine Watch. Archived from the original on 2016-04-14. Retrieved 2019-02-02.
  9. R. Notess, Greg (2002). "On the Net: Dead Search Engines". InfoToday. Archived from the original on 2002-05-25. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  10. Brid-Aine Parnell (December 18, 2012). "Search engines we have known ... before Google crushed them". The Register. Retrieved November 17, 2016.
  11. "Leading Leaders". A9 Management web page. Archived from the original on November 14, 2016. Retrieved November 15, 2016.
  12. "Blucora to sell InfoSpace business for $45 million". Seattle Times. July 5, 2016.
  13. "System1 raises $270 million for 'consumer intent' advertising". L.A. Biz. Retrieved 2017-12-01.
  14. "WebCrawler Search". WebCrawler. 2018-05-31. Retrieved 2019-02-02.
  15. "WebCrawler Search". WebCrawler. 2018-11-30. Retrieved 2019-02-02.
  16. McGuigan, Brendan (2007). "What was the First Search Engine?". WiseGeek. Archived from the original on 2007-04-27. Retrieved 2019-02-18.
  17. "Search Engine History.com". www.searchenginehistory.com. Retrieved 2019-01-25.
  18. "Infographic: Top 20 Most Popular Websites (1996-2013)". TechCo. 2014-12-26. Retrieved 2019-01-15.
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