Monday, February 2, 2009

1BestSearch.com History

1BestSearch.com is a LOCALLY FOCUSED search engine developed by Hale Multimedia primarily for the WyoBraska Area.

My passion for search technologies began when I was programming in dBase back in the 1980's. Databases are developed to organize your information so that you can find what you're looking for FAST. That's exactly what search engines are supposed to do. However, most major search engines give you results that are not well organized. I think this is what has motivated me to develop a more well-organized, easy-to-use search engine that will provide you with relevant results quickly.

This 'little' search engine already has quite the history behind it since 1BestSearch.com is really a culmination of several previous search websites dating back as far 1996.

My first search site was really more of a links site that was created before I knew how to tie my database programming into a website. Therefore, I handcoded every link, one at a time. I was very fortunate that the area I selected to make a directory for (Southwest OK) only had a couple hundred websites at the time! This is how The Internet Gold Pages began. I moved back to Western Nebraska in 1998 and by 2000 I was starting to learn php and mysql and it wasn't long before we had our first truly database driven search site. I wanted to focus on helping my hometown community so I created a WyoBraska Area Gold Pages website and produced a printed version that was distributed for free. The database just kept growing and I soon realized we would have to expand our scope beyond our area. Therefore, 1BestDirectory.com was born. This site was designed to incorporate several different areas of the country in one database, while still keeping them seperated by region or area of the country. 1BestDirectory.com became a widely used search engine in several countries but it was becoming too much like the major search engines. Since there were so many links submitted by the public, the directory became cluttered and was in dire need or reoganization.

However, the reorganization had to wait.

By this time we were getting extremely busy just keeping up with all the website design work. Between 2000 and 2007 we went from 45 website clients to almost 300 with our average website value tripling, leaving little time to work on our own sites.

Finally in 2008 we made the decision to bring back the Gold Pages under a new name and improved functionality - 1BestSearch.com.

We launched the new 1BestSearch.com on November 26th, 2008 (the day after Thanksgiving). Our goal is to create and maintain the most comprehensive, well-organized locally-focused search engine.

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