Time Travel Back to 2001 for Google's 10th Birthday

[bwnbwn]

[google.com...]

Kinda neat looking at a search 10 years in the past

[tedster]

That is interesting - and the site: operator works, too. But not the link: operator :(

[LifeinAsia]

I got it to work for 1 search, but now it seems to be broken...

[bwnbwn]

I have been using it as it might be a pretty good tool to find some old domains that may be hiding.

The internet archive is as well shown to look at the old version of the site.

Neat deal.

[Robert Charlton]

It doesn't seem to be working. They didn't have the kind of infrastructure in 2001 that they do now. ;)

[bwnbwn]

[web.archive.org...]

Working here nice little bit of information given out some years ago written for Stanford by none other than Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

[randle]

Thats pretty cool, nice of them to do that! What would be better though is to bring back the results from just around 2002, that was the apex of Google search results and the entire Google experience.

[LifeinAsia]

OK, seems to be working again now.

An interesting thing is to do a search in your industry and look at the sites/companies that ranked well back then, but are no longer around.

Also, interesting to see the number of sites that are still around but return 404 errors for their pages indexed back then.

[HuskyPup]

My 1,000th post therefore I'd better write something sensible or controversial!

Is it just me or do these results look so much cleaner? I know they don't have AdWords and the fonts are a slightly different colour however...is it me just getting older?

Just quickly checked a dozen of my keyword phrases and all at #1...woohooo:-)

Well, I knew they were however it's nice to show some of the young 'uns around the office just why it is our sites work so well in the SERPs when they want to go all "flashy" etc.

Heavens, I remember beta testing Google every weekend for months and months on end since, and I really don't know why other than that water feeling, but it was so obvious it was going to become #1.

Wish I'd made as much money as them in the same time! Took me twice as long:-)

So when do I get my 10th anniversary bonus cheque?

[LifeinAsia]

My 1,000th post therefore I'd better write something sensible or controversial!

So when do I get my 10th anniversary bonus cheque?

When you write your 10,000th post. ;)

[jimbeetle]

An interesting thing is to do a search in your industry and look at the sites/companies that ranked well back then, but are no longer around.

Yeah, most of my old competitors for one site at that time are all gone. Well, at least one area in which longevity feels good; now if I can just get the aches and pains out of the old body...

[outland88]

In my areas the old index shows Google has made a massive attack on commerce sites. Also back then the sites in my areas dealt entirely with the subject matter not so called trusted sites that have created pages for every word in the dictionary. Now Google engages in “headline chasing” and the “fruit of the day” ranking system. I honestly believe the old system was much more relevant. Now what you have in many areas are “hand picked sites” that dominate the top 50 of millions of searches. It’s a rigged system to deal with spam and push Adwords. Its a system meant to look relevant to the public but deals heavily in censoring to achieve the end result.

[carguy84]

A lot of .mil, .gov, .org results.

Now it's time to see what domain names are expired or no longer in use :).

[rise2it]

Thanks for that link - kind of interesting to go back, even though I still have a lot of reports from that era (glory days...lol).

Maybe I should be happy being #8 out of 300,000 results now, compared to being #1 out of 2,500 results then (for the same term)

It's really eye opening to do a search on an exact phrase (in quotes) and compare the number of results then to the number now.

For example, one search I ran had 12 results in 2001...38,000 today

The big difference is that most pages from that era were from real sites...now, you have 200 times as many pages, but the same number of real sites - the rest are fluff (garbage pages, pages created solely for adsense, pretend article pages, etc).

As for being relevant, the results then (being impartial with nothing to do with MY rankings) were better. At least when I got beat then, it was from REAL competitors with REAL sites and REAL stores....not epinions and other junk.

[amznVibe]

It's wonderful how you can actually find things eh?
Sigh, those were the "good old days". (now get off my lawn)

[Atharva]

That is an interesting tool put by google.

This also proves one thing. Google remembers everything. I mean it has the data set of 2001 ? i am sure it has all data sets since then.

Its a massive data management exercise !

[makemetop]

Not their oldest index - but pretty old. I'd just received a ban so don't appear (apart from listings of comments on here about being banned) :)

Oh happy memories!

[RonPK]

So Google was born in 1998 and their oldest memory dates from when they were 2-3 years old. That is just like a human :)

[steveb]

I think they made it 2001 instead of 2002 because it would be like showing pictures of yourself younger and much prettier than you are now.

[vincevincevince]

Tried pulling up a range of links from authoritative sites, including .gov, .gov.uk and .edu. 100% dead links. Seems none of them have read:
Cool URIs don't change [w3.org]
Really underlines the point!

[dataguy]

Wow. Back when the Internet was new someone posted a death threat against me and it really freaked me out. It would come up #1 when searching on my name.

It's been out of the index for years but it's back in this index.

Thanks for the memories, Google!

[wheel]

Is it just me? Or is this a pretty cool link development tool?

[mack]

it's amazing just how many pages and sites in that index are just no where to be found. I also like how google have provided a link to internet archive for old pages. This is truely a walk down memory lane. Ohh those where the days :)

Mack.

[iThink]

It was so easy to rank for big money terms then. Just wondering what the hell was I doing working a 9-5 job?

Just another reminder that time once gone by never comes back.

[DavidKeffen]

More like 1998 than 2001 if you ask me.

Found a couple of sites that I retired in '98 and several ones that were already up and running by 1999 are nowhere to be seen...

Fun though.

[clearvision]

OH, I like the current days results much better, but agree that the format of the page is much easier to view.

I went back to my old site and just cringed! Please, please, please those in my industry don't look at the archive ;) (...and do you think I'll tell you the industry...NOT).

It seems the dmoz was a high ranking result back in the day. Almost all our keywords put them in the top 5.

Very cool!

[BillyS]

Very cool... thanks Google.

[DannyTweb]

That's fantastic, we weren't penalized...

[gethan]

> one search I ran had 12 results in 2001...38,000 today

2001: 1 - 10 of about 27
2008: 1 - 10 of about 9,380,000

There has been a slight increase in competition for my keywords as well ;)

Thanks Google - a trip down memory lane...

[Rosalind]

From 9,200 to 230,000 for one of my regional keywords. I'd say "those were the days", but I wasn't even in the index for that search until about 2003.

You've got to wonder how this conversation will go in another 10 years. Undoubtedly the amount of useful information on the web increases all the time, but it's got to be more linear than exponential now that a lot more people are online. And will Google get better at filtering the junk?