Tava Insights: Search Engine Industry

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. It involves making certain changes to your website design and content that make your site more attractive to a search engine. It is the means through which websites improve their search rankings on engines like Google, Bing, etc. The higher your website ranks in search results, the more likely you are to garner attention and attract prospective and existing customers to your business.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is critically important for several reasons:

1. Visibility and Ranking: With SEO, your website can achieve higher visibility on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). This increases the chance of attracting potential customers to your website.

2. Traffic: Higher visibility and ranking directly result in increased traffic to your website, as people usually visit websites that appear on the first page of search engine results.

> Read More

Search engines work by following a three-step process:

1. Crawling: Search engines use automated software called “crawlers” or “spiders” to browse the internet and discover publicly available webpages. Crawlers start with a list of known webpages and follow hyperlinks on these pages to find new content.

2. Indexing: Once a webpage has been discovered, the search engine processes the information on the page and stores it in a large database (an index). Search engine indexing is the process by which a search engine collects, parses and stores data for use by the search engine. This process allows the search engine to provide swift and accurate search results. During this process, the search engine scans and collects data from websites during web crawling, understanding the content, and storing it in a database called the index. Indexing essentially serves the purpose of optimizing the speed and performance of finding relevant documents for a search query. Without indexing, the search engine would scan every document during each search, which would be a slow and inefficient process.

> Read More

The Bing Search Engine has several key differentiating features that set it apart from its competitors:

1. Daily Changing Background: Bing provides a beautiful, high-resolution, and daily changing background on its homepage. This compared to the plain look provided by most search engines gives Bing an edge in aesthetics that many users appreciate. Each background image also includes interactive points explaining the story behind the image.

2. Video Searching: Bing’s video search is quite superior, offering a grid layout with limitless scroll. This setup facilitates smoother video browsing by allowing users to watch previews by just hovering over a video.

3. Integration with Microsoft Products: Bing has been integrated with several other Microsoft services, such as Microsoft Office, Edge Browser, and Xbox, amongst others. This seamless integration provides users a more engaging experience while using other Microsoft products.

> Read More

Bing, Microsoft’s web search engine, is an integral part of the global digital landscape. Since its inception, Bing has made notable strides in providing an optimal search experience for users and challenging the monopoly of the industry’s giants. Using this article I am trying to explore the journey of Bing, its major achievements, and its current status, with a focus on its novel “Copilot” feature.

Originally known as “Live Search,” Bing’s story began in 2009 when Microsoft decided to rebrand its search engine as part of their increased efforts to compete with Google. Bing was more than just a rebranding; it was a restructuring from the ground up with a new core algorithm, user-friendly interface, and various unique features. Since its launch, Bing has been projected as a “decision engine” to help users make informed decisions rather than providing just a list of search results.

> Read More

Bing is a search engine that was created by Microsoft in 2009. It was designed to provide users with a more comprehensive and intuitive search experience than its predecessor, Microsoft’s Live Search. Microsoft had been attempting to create a better search engine since the early 2000s, but it wasn’t until 2009 that they were finally able to make Bing a reality.

The development of Bing was a long and complex process that involved a number of different teams and technologies. Microsoft first began work on the project in 2006, when it acquired a company called Powerset that specialized in natural language processing. Microsoft took the technology developed by Powerset and integrated it into its own search engine, which was then branded as “Live Search.” Live Search had some success, but it was still lacking in certain areas.

> Read More

Yahoo, founded in 1994 by two Stanford University students, Jerry Yang and David Filo, transformed the Internet landscape with its web portal and search engine functions. It holds a significant place in the evolution of the modern, dynamic digital world. Over two and a half decades, Yahoo has boldly resisted the test of time, technology, competition, and business industry fluctuations. Today, drawing back the curtain on Yahoo’s exceptional journey produces an inspired story of innovation, trial-and-error, achievement, and current status.

Yahoo started its phenomenal journey as ‘Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web,’ an internet directory assisting users in web navigation. The next turning point arrived in March 1995 with the advent of Yahoo, an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchically Organized Oracle”. This marked a distinctive entry into the search engine segment, which revolutionized the concept of accessing information online.

> Read More

The history of search engines is incomplete without the mention of InfoSeek. InfoSeek, one of the pioneer search engines that emerged during the advent of the internet, was introduced in the mid-1990s. While it no longer exists today, its impact on the search engine domain and the concepts it introduced continue to influence present-day search engine algorithms.

Established by two software engineers, Steve Kirsch and Robert P. Anthony, the primary goal of InfoSeek was to simplify the search process on the internet. Infoseek was an immersive search engine that catalyzed significant changes in digital marketing, SEO, and how search queries are processed. The free-of-charge service offered direct access to comprehensive search results in real-time, including newsgroup reports, which was incredible for the time.

> Read More

HotBot was once a prominent search engine during the early days of the Internet. Launched in 1996, it quickly gained popularity for its comprehensive and powerful search capabilities. Created by Wired Magazine, HotBot aimed to revolutionize the way people find information online.

What set HotBot apart from other search engines of its time was its remarkable search accuracy and speed. It indexed millions of web pages, making it one of the largest search databases at the time. It utilized advanced algorithms to deliver relevant search results, enabling users to easily find what they were looking for. Bot those were not the only ones, here is a short list with some of the key differences: 

> Read More

In the mid-90s, when the World Wide Web was still very much in its infancy, an array of search engines competed fiercely for dominance. Amongst these pioneers was Lycos, a search engine launched in 1994. An offspring of one of the earliest research projects in this domain at Carnegie Mellon University, Lycos soon positioned itself at the forefront of web-browsing technology.

Lycos was named after a species of spiders known for their hunting prowess, Lycos stood out for its robust search algorithms and extensive web directory. It quickly gained a reputation as an efficient and reliable tool for online users to navigate the burgeoning landscape of the internet. While its competitors were focusing more on evolving their search capabilities, Lycos had set its eyes on becoming a comprehensive web portal showcasing an extensive index of web pages, email service, and topical categories to facilitate the search.

> Read More

AltaVista was a web search engine that was established in 1995 and it rapidly gained popularity and became one of the most widely used search engines of its time. Developed by researchers at Digital Equipment Corporation’s Network Systems Laboratory and Western Research Laboratory, it was introduced to the public during a time when most search engines were in their infancy. 

AltaVista’s innovation was in its ability to index a vast number of web pages, a significant development in the mid-1990s. The search engine used a fast, multi-threaded crawler (Scooter) that could cover many more webpages than were believed to exist at the time.

In the early days of the internet, when search engines were in their infancy, AltaVista emerged as a trailblazer, revolutionizing the way users accessed information online. AltaVista also pioneered numerous features that became standard in search engines, such as:

> Read More