IP Democracy: A Detailed History of Search

Search stalwart Danny Sullivan has a very interesting entry today, one that recaps his ten years (to the day) of writing about search and search engine companies. What’s interesting about Danny’s obviously heart-felt look-back over the past decade is how little search mattered until about five years ago.

That makes his personal recounting of the creation of Search Engine Watch even more poignant — he started something, stuck to it for a long time before the topic of search became the hot issue it is and still likes the field. It sounds like Mecklermedia, later renamed Jupitermedia, which bought Search Engine Watch from Sullivan but let him keep running it, did right by him — Sullivan expresses appreciation for the folks at that publishing company.

Kagan Research, however, just bought Jupitermedia, and one can be forgiven if Sullivan’s retrospective sounds like a swan-song. It’s not.

What I can say is that for the near future, I expect to remain working on the site and coverage as I have, bringing some of our standing content back up to date, which I know has been neglected due to the need to cover the news that continues to flow in. My original Webmaster’s Guide helped many understand search engines, and I very much want to ensure Search Engine Watch remains as a leading resource doing that in the years to come.

For the student of search, Sullivan provides a very handy year-by-year catalog of important articles that document the milestones in the business.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on April 17, 2006 4:01 PM to IP Democracy