Aliweb
Encyclopedia
ALIWEB is considered the first Web search engine
, as its predecessors were either built with different purposes (the Wanderer
, Gopher) or were literally just indexers (Archie
, Veronica
and Jughead
).
First announced in November 1993 by developer Martijn Koster, and presented in May 1994 at the First International Conference on the World Wide Web
at CERN
in Geneva
, ALIWEB preceded WebCrawler
by several months.
ALIWEB allowed users to submit the locations of index files on their sites which enabled the search engine to include webpages and add user-written page descriptions and keywords. This empowered webmasters to define the terms that would lead users to their pages, and also avoided setting bots (e.g. the Wanderer
, JumpStation
) which used up bandwidth. As relatively few people submitted their sites, ALIWEB was not very widely used.
Martijn Koster, who was also instrumental in the creation of the Robots Exclusion Standard
, detailed the background and objectives of ALIWEB with an overview of its functions and framework in the paper he presented at CERN
.
Koster is not associated with a commercial
website which uses the aliweb name.
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
, as its predecessors were either built with different purposes (the Wanderer
World Wide Web Wanderer
The World Wide Web Wanderer, also referred to as just the Wanderer, was a Perl-based web crawler that was first deployed in June 1993 to measure the size of the World Wide Web. The Wanderer was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Matthew Gray, who now works for Google. It was...
, Gopher) or were literally just indexers (Archie
Archie search engine
Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing people to find specific files. It is considered to be the first Internet search engine. The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan, and J...
, Veronica
Veronica (computer)
Veronica is a search engine system for the Gopher protocol, developed in 1992 by Steven Foster and Fred Barrie at the University of Nevada, Reno.Veronica is a constantly updated database of the names of almost every menu item on thousands of Gopher servers...
and Jughead
Jughead (computer)
Jughead is a search engine system for the Gopher protocol. It is distinct from Veronica in that it searches a single server at a time.Jughead is officially an acronym for Jonzy's Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display, though it was originally chosen to match that of the FTP search...
).
First announced in November 1993 by developer Martijn Koster, and presented in May 1994 at the First International Conference on the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
at CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, ALIWEB preceded WebCrawler
WebCrawler
WebCrawler is a metasearch engine that blends the top search results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing Search , Ask.com, About.com, MIVA, LookSmart and other popular search engines. WebCrawler also provides users the option to search for images, audio, video, news, yellow pages and white pages...
by several months.
ALIWEB allowed users to submit the locations of index files on their sites which enabled the search engine to include webpages and add user-written page descriptions and keywords. This empowered webmasters to define the terms that would lead users to their pages, and also avoided setting bots (e.g. the Wanderer
World Wide Web Wanderer
The World Wide Web Wanderer, also referred to as just the Wanderer, was a Perl-based web crawler that was first deployed in June 1993 to measure the size of the World Wide Web. The Wanderer was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Matthew Gray, who now works for Google. It was...
, JumpStation
JumpStation
JumpStation was the first WWW search engine that behaved, and appeared to the user, the way current web search engines do. It started indexing on Sunday 12 December 1993 and was announced on the Mosaic "What's New" webpage on 21 December 1993...
) which used up bandwidth. As relatively few people submitted their sites, ALIWEB was not very widely used.
Martijn Koster, who was also instrumental in the creation of the Robots Exclusion Standard
Robots Exclusion Standard
The Robot Exclusion Standard, also known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol, is a convention to prevent cooperating web crawlers and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website which is otherwise publicly viewable. Robots are often used by search engines to...
, detailed the background and objectives of ALIWEB with an overview of its functions and framework in the paper he presented at CERN
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research , known as CERN , is an international organization whose purpose is to operate the world's largest particle physics laboratory, which is situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco–Swiss border...
.
Koster is not associated with a commercial
Link farm
On the World Wide Web, a link farm is any group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine...
website which uses the aliweb name.