They grow up so fast…

It was just a few years ago that a school project took the first steps away from its school hosted subdomain and onto its very own domain. The modest We’ve Moved page can still be seen at archive.org as can the original home page.

Check out the special searches for Stanford and Linux and the familiar “beta” marker. Now Google has specialized searches for a whole range of topics and four of the six tabs (seven if you have the desktop search downloaded) on the homepage are beta.

Back then, the search business looked very different and it took a lot more effort to find what you were looking for. The appearance of Google on the scene changed everything. Looking back is a good reminder of how quickly the web evolves. Where will the search engines be in another 10 years and how will SEO adapt? It makes you think.

Links courtesy of /.

Susan Esparza is former managing editor at Bruce Clay Inc., and has written extensively for clients and internal publications. Along with Bruce Clay, she is co-author of the first edition of Search Engine Optimization All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies.

See Susan's author page for links to connect on social media.