Before Google Became Big...

Omniseek Poll from May 1999

[sem4u]

Which search engine yields the best results?

Omniseek - 16%
HotBot - 6%
Yahoo - 18%
Infoseek - 7%
Altavista - 15%
Excite - 6%
Open Directory - 7%
None Impress Me - 21%

Total votes - 385

The results were of course skewed by people visiting Omniseek.com to cast their votes, but it reminds me how much things have changed. :)

[tedster]

The "None Impress Me" part -- from a user's perspective -- that's what Google changed so very much. I remember using AltaVista (my favorite back then) and needing to weed through totally irrelevant results in the top ten on many searches. Not spam, just way off target.

Google's relevancy was breathtaking when they first arrived. They really upped the ante for web search.

Then webmasters began learning how to game the Google algo and Google responded to that and...well we know how intense that "feedback system" has become.

I think most people were like this report shows. We began on the web using Yahoo and Yahoo suggested AltaVista when they didn't satisfy. Eventually many began going directly to AV.