Google in the lead

June 2000

Those of you who have followed the search engine universe for a while, will know that there is a constant struggle towards being No. 1 in terms of search index size. The question is: "Who has the largest database of webpages?"

We believe search algorithms and the facilities for advanced searching is far more important for search quality. It does not matter that the site you are looking for is in the database if you are unable to find it. Nevertheless, it is obviously an advantage that the search engines are able to cover larger parts of the net.

For a long time Alta Vista was in the lead. Then the Norwegian upstart Fast announced their plans of covering "all the web". Lately Inktomi produced new indexes covering half a billion webpages; although it does not seem that its various search partners -- like HotBot, Anzwers and Canada.com -- has started using the whole Inktomi database yet.

Now Google has started using a new index, containing 560 million full-text indexed webpages and 500 million partially indexed URLs. The partially indexed URLs are pages that link to some of the full-text indexed webpages. Hence you can reach more than 1 billion pages using Google. That's not bad, considering that some reckon the Web contains approximately 1 billion pages!

• Google press release
• "Google's Cool Billion," by Chris Sherman
• Google

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