19 replies to this topic

[laura]

Page 279, The Search, John Batelle mentions thinking back to your first Google epiphany, or your first AltaVista epiphany - "how all of a sudden you realized the world was, quite literally, at your feet (or rather, your fingertips)."

I vaguely remember discovering Google and quickly switching over after being a Mamma.com user, occasionally dabbling in Dogpile searching. And discovering AltaVista's people search and translator tools, whch I still use today.

What was your first search epiphany?

[Alan Perkins]

Using AltaVista on the day it launched and realising its potential for search marketing.

[incrediblehelp]

When I first started SEO in 1999 and being in the top 10 for "generic viagra" and saying to myself, man this is easy

[meta]

I took a class, read forums, volunteered my services to a nonprofit and ttok a stab at revising the site. The ranks shot up. You would laugh at some of the things I was told to do and did, but there was enough good stuff to matter a lot. Those pages still rank well for the key terms, and I haven't been involved with that site for a long time.

[randfish]

I think I recently had the revelation that del.icio.us marked the beginning of something entirely new in search - UGC that would actually impact relevance and importance. Sometimes, we're not seeking an answer, we're seeking what's most popular or what's "hot" in a topic area. When people start coming 'round to that idea, I think social tagging in the search sense is going to really take off.

[incrediblehelp]

I think I recently had the revelation that del.icio.us marked the beginning of something entirely new in search - UGC that would actually impact relevance and importance. Sometimes, we're not seeking an answer, we're seeking what's most popular or what's "hot" in a topic area. When people start coming 'round to that idea, I think social tagging in the search sense is going to really take off.

Sure social tagging is ideal, but I have a funny feeling that people are just to lazy.

[Randy]

Search epiphany?

I'm not even sure this qualifies since Search wasn't anything close to a big deal back then...

But mine came when I had a completely free little midi jukebox site that was hosted on my personal AOL account at the time (we're talking the 80's here) and was supposedly the in the top 5 of the most popular sites on the entire Internet. For two years running.

Had AOL not been picking up the tab because I was staff, there was no way in Hades I'd have been able to afford the hosting bill. And the hits/bandwidth it used up was considerably less than many of my sites take up today.

[laura]

Back then, discovering the next better search engine was an occasonal epiphany, these days I feel like I have a search engine epiphany every day!

[cline]

Analyzing results of keyword-targeted banner buys on AltaVista in 1999 and seeing that their performance blew away all other online media.

[projectphp]

Realising how damned funny the whole thing is!

[DanThies]

Fiddling with infoseek and realizing that more SEOs were looking for "sex" than anyone else.

[qwerty]

The day ol' Tim and I invented the internet, he was going on and on about how this was going to make citation of academic papers a breeze, and I asked, "do you think maybe we could make a buck off of this thing?"

[Hyperformance]

So funny you guys -


We began a website (html 1.0) called HOTCD.com - this was before e-commerce was even a term... we started it to resell returned computer CD's from best byyy (as they could not be sold as new again) - we took their returns inventory and gave them $3 for every CD we resold. The goal was to make our 800 number ring - and it worked fabulously! We also began the first list of end-users who had CD players installed at home or work (at that time, they did not come as standard on the computer) we would remail these names twice a year with new titles and get incredible response rates... we also repackaged to cardboard and sleeve and gained 10's of 1,000's of jewel cases we then resold for 20 cents apiece.

Wow, those were some of the days... this Industry makes me feel old again.

- S

Bob - Somebody still told me I could make a buck off this thing -

[Randy]

Wait... You and Tim did that Bob?

Was Al sitting in the corner brooding or something?

[laura]

Fiddling with infoseek and realizing that more SEOs were looking for "sex" than anyone else.