“Ten years ago every web site had a section of external links because people felt it was their personal responsibility to configure the environment and build the infrastructure. The many-to-many principle showed itself in linking strategies as well. A site was not complete without links to other sites.”
- Olia Lialina, 2005
Human curated and maintaned directories were commonplace the only way to find any new sites!
Webrings and external links were commonplace on personal webpages.
User inputs a query --> search engine returns relevant hyperlinks!
The very first search engine! Relied primarily on the preexisting human-built lists.
Web crawlers used to index the web. Engines were susceptible to certain exploits...
Bots that visit pages, follow links, and record (index) what they find!
PageRank is a search algorithm that ranks indexed sites by how many other sites link to it
goto.com began the practice of offering paid search results (pay per click) for premier real estate at the top of the search results. Google and other browsers quickly followed suit.
In more recent years, people have become unsatisfied with the current state of things online! As a result, there have been active pushes to decentralize the web and make it more personal again