Editing ALIWEB

{{Short description|Internet search engine}}
{{Infobox website
| url = {{webarchive 
|url=https://web.archive.org/web/19970618184044/http://www.nexor.com/public/aliweb/aliweb.html
|date=18 June 1997 |title=ALIWEB
 }}
| name = ALIWEB
| logo = 
| type = [[Search engine]]
| launch_date = {{start date and age|1994|5}}
| current_status = Inactive
}}

'''ALIWEB''' ('''Archie-Like Indexing for the Web''') is the first Web search engine.

First announced in November 1993<ref name="Announcement html">{{cite web |url= https://groups.google.com/group/comp.infosystems.www/browse_frm/thread/5903be849c05362f/4b58ee36a52f21ee?hl=en#4b58ee36a52f21ee |title= ANNOUNCEMENT: ALIWEB (Archie-Like Indexing for the WEB) |author= Martijn Koster |work= comp.infosystems) |date= 30 November 1993 }}</ref> by developer [[Martijn Koster]] while working at [[Nexor]], and presented in May 1994<ref name="CERN">{{cite web |url= http://www94.web.cern.ch/WWW94/PrelimProcs.html |title= List of PostScript files for the WWW94 advance proceedings |work= First International Conference on the World-Wide Web |date= June 1994 |quote= Title: "Aliweb - Archie-Like Indexing in the Web."  Author: Martijn Koster.  Institute: NEXOR Ltd., [[United Kingdom|UK]].  PostScript, Size: 213616, Printed: 10 pages |access-date= 2007-06-03 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20180508003155/http://www94.web.cern.ch/WWW94/PrelimProcs.html |archive-date= 2018-05-08 |url-status= dead }}</ref> at the [[History of the World Wide Web#Web governance|First International Conference]] on the [[World Wide Web]] at [[CERN]] in [[Geneva]], ALIWEB preceded [[WebCrawler]] by several months.<ref name="Birthday">{{cite web |url= http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2161311 |title= Happy Birthday, Aliweb! |author= Chris Sherman |work= [[Search Engine Watch]] |date= 3 December 2002 |access-date= 2007-01-03 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20061017011801/http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2161311 |archive-date= 2006-10-17 |url-status= dead }}</ref>

ALIWEB allows users to submit the locations of index files on their sites<ref name="Birthday"/><ref name="History">{{cite web |url= http://www.wiley.com/legacy/compbooks/sonnenreich/history.html |title= A History of Search Engines |author= Wes Sonnenreich |work= [[John Wiley & Sons]] website|year= 1997 }}</ref> which enables the search engine to include webpages and add user-written page descriptions and keywords. This empowers webmasters to define the terms that would lead users to their pages, and also avoided setting bots (''e.g.'' [[World Wide Web Wanderer|the Wanderer]], [[JumpStation]]) which used up bandwidth. 

Martijn Koster, who was also instrumental in the creation of the [[Robots Exclusion Standard]],<ref name="Exclusion">{{cite web |url= http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html |title= Robots Exclusion |author= Martijn Koster |work= robotstxt.org |access-date= 2007-06-03 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20071107021800/http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion.html |archive-date= 2007-11-07 |url-status= dead }}</ref><ref name="Robots">{{cite web |url= http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/threat-or-treat.html |title= Robots in the Web: threat or treat? |author= Martijn Koster |work= Reprinted with permission from ConneXions, The Interoperability Report, Volume 9, No. 4, April 1995. |access-date= 2007-01-03 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070102003037/http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/threat-or-treat.html |archive-date= 2007-01-02 |url-status= dead }}</ref> detailed the background and objectives of ALIWEB with an overview of its functions and framework in the paper he presented at [[CERN]].<ref name="CERN"/>  Koster left Nexor and in the following years development ceased until a new company took over the project.  It was discovered that the database file had actually exceeded the range of search so therefore when you entered a search term it would not search the entire database and weight the results, it would only search from the beginning of the database until it either ran out of results to show or exceeded the number of results requested.  The new company developers fixed this by weighting the results and searching the entire database before displaying the results.  

==See also==
* [[World Wide Web Worm]]
* [[JumpStation]]
* [[Archie (search engine)]]
* [[History of the Internet]]
* [[List of search engines]]

== References ==
{{reflist}}
<!-- 1994 CERN paper no longer hosted at informatik site - leaving it embedded for now * [http://www.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/menschen/sommersn_public/aliweb-paper.html Koster's paper] presented at [[CERN]] in May 1994. -->

{{Early web browsers}}
{{Web search engines}}

[[Category:History of the Internet]]
[[Category:Defunct internet search engines]]
[[Category:Internet properties established in 1994]]