ALIWEB

Former internet search engine

ALIWEB
Type of site	Search engine
URL	ALIWEB at the Wayback Machine (archived 18 June 1997)
Launched	May 1994; 29 years ago (1994-05)
Current status	Defunct

ALIWEB (Archie-Like Indexing for the Web) is considered the second Web search engine after JumpStation.

First announced in November 1993^[1] by developer Martijn Koster while working at Nexor, and presented in May 1994^[2] at the First International Conference on the World Wide Web at CERN in Geneva, ALIWEB preceded WebCrawler by several months.^[3]

ALIWEB allowed users to submit the locations of index files on their sites^[3]^[4] which enabled the search engine to include webpages and add user-written page descriptions and keywords. This empowered webmasters to define the terms that would lead users to their pages, and also avoided setting bots (e.g. the Wanderer, JumpStation) which used up bandwidth. As relatively few people submitted their sites, ALIWEB was not very widely used.

Martijn Koster, who was also instrumental in the creation of the Robots Exclusion Standard,^[5]^[6] detailed the background and objectives of ALIWEB with an overview of its functions and framework in the paper he presented at CERN.^[2]

Koster is not associated with a commercial website posing as ALIWEB.^[7]

References

^ Martijn Koster (30 November 1993). "ANNOUNCEMENT: ALIWEB (Archie-Like Indexing for the WEB)". comp.infosystems).
^ ^a ^b "List of PostScript files for the WWW94 advance proceedings". First International Conference on the World-Wide Web. June 1994. Archived from the original on 2018-05-08. Retrieved 2007-06-03. Title: "Aliweb - Archie-Like Indexing in the Web." Author: Martijn Koster. Institute: NEXOR Ltd., UK. PostScript, Size: 213616, Printed: 10 pages
^ ^a ^b Chris Sherman (3 December 2002). "Happy Birthday, Aliweb!". Search Engine Watch. Archived from the original on 2006-10-17. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
^ Wes Sonnenreich (1997). "A History of Search Engines". John Wiley & Sons website.
^ Martijn Koster. "Robots Exclusion". robotstxt.org. Archived from the original on 2007-11-07. Retrieved 2007-06-03.
^ Martijn Koster. "Robots in the Web: threat or treat?". Reprinted with permission from ConneXions, The Interoperability Report, Volume 9, No. 4, April 1995. Archived from the original on 2007-01-02. Retrieved 2007-01-03.
^ Martijn Koster. "Historical Web Services: ALIWEB". Martijn Koster's Historical Web Services page. Archived from the original on 2007-01-16. Note that I have nothing to do with aliweb.com. It appears some marketing company has taken the old aliweb code and data, and are using it as a site for advertising purposes. Their search results are worthless. Their claim to have trademarked "aliweb" I have been unable to confirm in patent searches. My recommendation is that you avoid them.

Timeline of web browsers

General
Comparison lightweight History List for Unix Usage share

1990s

1990	WorldWideWeb (Nexus)
1991	Line Mode Browser libwww
1992	Erwise MacWWW (Samba) MidasWWW tkWWW ViolaWWW
1993	AMosaic Arena Cello Emacs/W3 Lynx 2 NCSA Mosaic VMS Mosaic
1994	AirMosaic Internet in a Box ANT Fresco Argo IBM WebExplorer SlipKnot Minuet Navipress Mosaic/Mosaic Netscape/Netscape Navigator Spyglass Mosaic TCP/Connect II
1995	Agora ALynx AMSD Ariadna Cyberjack eWorld Web Browser Grail Internet Explorer 1 Internet Explorer 2 Netscape Navigator 2 NetShark OmniWeb HotJava UdiWWW WebShark w3m
1996	Cyberdog Arachne AWeb IBrowse Amaya Internet Explorer 3 Netscape Navigator 3 Opera 2 Oracle PowerBrowser tcpCONNECT4 Voyager
1997	Netscape Communicator Internet Explorer 4 Opera 2.1
1998	NeoPlanet Mozilla Application Suite Opera 3–3.21
1999	iCab Internet Explorer 5 Omniweb 3 Opera 3.5–3.62

2000s

2000	Beonex Communicator Galeon K-Meleon MediaBrowser Netscape 6 Opera 4–4.02
2001	iCab 2.5 Internet Explorer 6 Omniweb 4 Opera 5–5.12
2002	Camino Epiphany Netscape 7 Opera 6–6.1
2003	GreenBrowser Maxthon Opera 7–7.3 Safari SlimBrowser
2004	Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox Opera 7.5–7.55
2005	AOL Explorer Deepnet Explorer Firefox 1.5 Opera 8–8.54 Safari 2
2006	Firefox 2 Internet Explorer 7 Opera 9–9.27
2007	Maxthon 2 Opera 9.5–9.64 Safari 3 SeaMonkey 1.1
2008	Chrome Firefox 3 Netscape Browser Netscape Navigator 9 NetSurf 1.2
2009	Chrome 2–3 Firefox 3.5 Internet Explorer 8 Opera 10–10.63 Pale Moon Safari 4 SeaMonkey 2.0

2010s

2010	Chrome 4–8 Firefox 3.6 Lunascape 6.0.1 Maxthon 3 NetSurf 2.5 Opera 11–11.64 Safari 5
2011	Chrome 9–16 Firefox 4–9 Internet Explorer 9 Lunascape 6.5 Opera 12–12.17 SeaMonkey 2.1–2.4 Waterfox
2012	Chrome 17–23 Firefox 10–17 Internet Explorer 10 Lunascape 6.7 Maxthon 3.4 NetSurf 2.9 Safari 6 Yandex Browser
2013	Chrome 24–31 Firefox 18–26 Internet Explorer 11 Opera 15–18 Safari 7 SeaMonkey 2.15–2.22
2014	Chrome 32–39 Firefox 27–34 Lunascape 6.9 NetSurf 3.1 Opera 19–26 Safari 8 SeaMonkey 2.23–2.31
2015	Chrome 40–47 Firefox 35–43 Lunascape 6.10–6.12 Microsoft Edge 20, 25 Opera 27–34 Safari 9 SeaMonkey 2.32–2.39 Vivaldi Technical Preview 1–Beta 2
2016	Blisk 1.0.125–2.0.136 Brave 0.7–0.12 Chrome 48–55 Firefox 44–50 Lunascape 6.13–6.15 Microsoft Edge 38 Opera 35–42 Safari 10 Vivaldi Beta 3–1.6 Yandex 15.12–16.9
2017	Basilisk Brave 0.13–0.19 Chrome 56–63 Firefox 51–57 Microsoft Edge 40, 41 Opera 43–49 Safari 11 SeaMonkey 2.46–2.49 Vivaldi 1.7–1.13
2018	Blisk 8.0.201–10.1.262 Brave 0.20–0.60 Chrome 64–71 Firefox 58–64 Microsoft Edge 42–44 Opera 50–57 Safari 12 Vivaldi 1.14–2.2 Waterfox 56.0–56.2 Yandex 17.9–18.10
2019	Blisk 11.0–12.0.92 Brave 0.61–1.1 Chrome 72–79 Firefox 65–71 Microsoft Edge 44 Opera 58–65 Safari 13 Vivaldi 2.3–2.10 Waterfox 60.1–68.0a2 Whale 1.4–1.5 Yandex 18.11–19.12

2020s

2020	Blisk 13.0 Brave 1.2–1.18 Chrome 80–87 Firefox 72–84 Microsoft Edge 79–87 Opera 66–73 SeaMonkey 2.53 Vivaldi 2.11–3.5 Safari 14
2021	Blisk 14.0–17.0 Brave 1.19–1.33 Chrome 88–96 Firefox 85–95 Microsoft Edge 88–96 Opera 74–82 SeaMonkey 2.53.10.2 Vivaldi 3.6–5.0 Yandex 20.11.5–21.3 Safari 15
2022	Arc 0.46–0.81 Blisk 18.0–19.1 Brave 1.34–1.46 Chrome 97–108 Firefox 96–108 Microsoft Edge 97–108 Opera 83–94 Vivaldi 5.1–5.6 Yandex 22.1–22.11 Safari 16
2023	Arc 0.85–1.21 Blisk 20.0–22.0 Brave 1.47–1.61 Chrome 109–120 Firefox 109–121 Microsoft Edge 109–120 Opera 95–106 Vivaldi 5.7–6.5 Yandex 23.1–23.11 Safari 17
2024	Arc 1.25– Brave 1.62– Chrome 121– Firefox 122– Microsoft Edge 121– Opera 107– Vivaldi 6.6– Yandex 24.1–

Related topics
3D Markup Language for Web Aliweb ARPANET ASCII BITNET Browser wars CompuServe Elm Email File Transfer Protocol Gopher HTML HyperCard HyTelnet NCSA Telnet NLS Prodigy Teletext Telnet Usenet UUCP Videotex Viewdata Virtual Reality Markup Language Web page Whole Internet User's Guide and Catalog World Wide Web X.25

Web search engines

Active

Dedicated	AOL Ahmia Ask.com Baidu Bing Blackle Brave DuckDuckGo Ecosia Fireball Google Kiddle KidRex KidzSearch Lycos Mojeek Naver Parsijoo Perplexity.ai Petal SAPO Seznam.cz Sogou Swisscows WebCrawler Yahoo! Yandex Youdao
Metasearch engines	Dogpile Excite Info.com Kagi MetaCrawler MetaGer Mullvad Leta Searx Startpage Qwant