Excite Search Engine – The Good, The Bad and The Missed Opportunity.

Excite was one of the pioneering search engines that revolutionized the way people accessed information on the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Launched in 1995, Excite quickly gained popularity due to its innovative features and user-friendly interface, becoming one of the leading search engines of its time.

Excite distinguished itself from other search engines of the era by providing a comprehensive and customizable search experience. It had a clean and intuitive design that allowed users to easily enter search queries and receive relevant results. Excite’s search algorithm utilized a combination of keyword matching and relevance ranking to deliver accurate and useful search results to users.

One of the standout features of Excite was its comprehensive directory, which organized websites into different categories, making it easier for users to discover new content. This directory included websites across various topics, ranging from news and entertainment to finance and sports. Users could navigate through the directory and explore websites based on their interests, providing a convenient way to find information without searching for specific keywords.

Excite also incorporated personalized features that tailored search results based on user preferences. Additionally, Excite incorporated personalized features, such as the “My Excite” feature, which allowed users to customize their homepage by selecting specific topics of interest. This gave users a sense of ownership and control over their search experience.

However, in the early 2000s, following a series of financial setbacks and increasing competition, Excite’s prominence began to wane. Perhaps the largest blow came in the form of a missed opportunity: in 1999, Excite had the chance to buy a then-little-known upcoming search engine called Google, but passed on the opportunity.

In 2001, Excite went bankrupt and its assets were purchased by iWon.com, an online contest site. Excite subsequently became a portal, offering a variety of content such as news, weather, email service, and a search engine powered first by Overture, and later by Google.

In 2004, Ask Jeeves (which later became Ask.com) purchased Excite. Ask.com decided to focus more on a Q&A approach rather than traditional search but kept Excite running as a separate portal.

Today, Excite is still up and running, primarily as a web portal offering a multitude of services including news, weather, and other features (email services were stopped in 2021). However, it no longer holds the status of a leading search engine and is overshadowed by giants like Google and Bing.

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