Editing World Wide Web Wanderer

{{Short description|Web crawler}}

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| type             = [[Web search engine]]
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| launch_date      = {{start date and age|1993|6|30}}
| current_status   = Closed
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The '''World Wide Web Wanderer''', also simply called '''The Wanderer''', was a [[Perl]]-based [[web crawler]] that was first deployed in June 1993 to measure the size of the [[World Wide Web]].   The Wanderer was developed at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]] by Matthew Gray, who also created back in 1993 one of the 100 first web servers in history, www.mit.edu.<ref>{{Cite web|last=SEO|first=Doctor|date=2022|title=Evolution of SEO|url=https://doctor-seo.net/en/seo-course/seo-fundations/evolution-of-seo/|website=www.doctor-seo.net}}</ref> The crawler was used to generate an index called the ''Wandex'' later in 1993. The Wanderer charted the growth of the web until late 1995.

The ''Wanderer'' was probably the first [[web robot]], and, with its index, clearly had the potential to become a general-purpose [[web search engine|WWW search engine]]. The author, Matthew Gray, does not make this claim.<ref>[https://www.mit.edu/people/mkgray/index.3.html Matthew Gray's home page] - [https://www.mit.edu/~mkgray/net/background.html Pertinent page on Matthew Gray's section on MIT site]</ref> Elsewhere, it is stated that the purpose of the ''Wanderer'' was not to be a web search engine.<ref>[https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/13277/25053550-MIT.pdf Brian LaMacchia's PhD thesis, section 1.2.3]</ref>

== References ==
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== External links ==
*[https://www.mit.edu/~mkgray/net/  Growth of the Web Report]
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20030512083018/http://ksi.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/archives/WWW-TALK/www-talk-1993q2.messages/706.html Early mention of the World Wide Web Wanderer]

[[Category:Defunct internet search engines]]
[[Category:Web crawlers]]