How would you search the internet without search engines?

[JohnB445]

I was curious what was there before google or search engines.

Did you have to know the websites manually to find them, and how would you find them? Through brochures?

 

[Aussie Pete]

I was curious what was there before google or search engines.

Did you have to know the websites manually to find them, and how would you find them? Through brochures?

I was on the internet in the days of dial up and slow modems. From memory Yahoo was very popular. There were others - web wombat comes to mind. I don't remember searching apart from a browser. (This was 1990's). Google blew them all away pretty much. That was in 1998.

 

[hedrick]

Generally you built up a list of starting points and followed links from there. However indexing systems started fairly early.

 

[bèlla]

History of search engines.

~Bella

 

[Anthony2019]

I miss Jeeves so much!

 

[A Realist]

I started off using webcrawler.com back in '95 when I got my first dial-up connection.

 

[Anthony2019]

Back in the olden days, you could go online using Prestel. It was a type of glorified teletext service (more interactive, eg. you could send messages etc) and retrieve a vast amount of information. It was much more expensive though and most people never used it. It certainly didn't have the search engine capabilities we have today.

 

[SkyWriting]

I was curious what was there before google or search engines.

Did you have to know the websites manually to find them, and how would you find them? Through brochures?

The first networks were between military use groups. Schools formed networks after that. Each network had an index of available functions.

 

[chevyontheriver]

I was curious what was there before google or search engines.

Did you have to know the websites manually to find them, and how would you find them? Through brochures?

Way back there was Gopher. And Archie, Veronica, and Jughead.

Online Jargon, Acronyms, and Texting Shorthand :-) | NetLingo.com

 

[jimmyjimmy]

I was curious what was there before google or search engines.

Did you have to know the websites manually to find them, and how would you find them? Through brochures?

I remember Yahoo, but not what we did prior.

 

[Cross Over the Lake]

The earliest one I remember using (prior to finding AOL) was Altavista if I remember right. But I got hooked on AOL chat rooms back then, I didn’t do a lot of “searching” for information. That was on Netscape.

 

[SkyWriting]

The earliest one I remember using (prior to finding AOL) was Altavista if I remember right. But I got hooked on AOL chat rooms back then, I didn’t do a lot of “searching” for information. That was on Netscape.

I had the most fun of my life in an AOL chat. We had funny quips that we reposted and it turned into a reposting rap session that had my sides aching. I spent a summer meeting up with those people later at dance clubs.

 

[Chesterton]

I'm old enough to remember when we used candles and oil lamps to search the internet. We'd bring along a canary, and if the canary died we'd know "don't go there, we're getting close to 4chan".

 

[Cross Over the Lake]

I'm old enough to remember when we used candles and oil lamps to search the internet. We'd bring along a canary, and if the canary died we'd know "don't go there, we're getting close to 4chan".

I remember when I was a kid I would step out on my porch and yell at my neighbor friend to see if he wanted to come out and play. Now kids be texting each other from the other side of the room.

 

[Resha Caner]

Generally you built up a list of starting points and followed links from there. However indexing systems started fairly early.

Ah, yes. The good ol' days. The first time I was on the Internet I had to dial into a shared account our company rented from a local university, and the output on my screen looked like something from The Matrix.

It was like party lines for telephones ... for those who experienced party lines. Or maybe it was more like Ham Radio ... for those who experienced Ham Radio.

 

[Daniel Marsh]

The first networks were between military use groups. Schools formed networks after that. Each network had an index of available functions.

ARPANET - Wikipedia
MILNET - Wikipedia
NIPRNet - Wikipedia

 

[SkyWriting]

ARPANET - Wikipedia
MILNET - Wikipedia
NIPRNet - Wikipedia

Yes, Arpanet was developed to remain functional after nuclear damage.

 

[joshua 1 9]

I was curious what was there before google or search engines.

Did you have to know the websites manually to find them, and how would you find them? Through brochures?

Before Google we had Yahoo. We also were given web site information the same way people give out that information now.

 

[Daniel Marsh]

rth