I've been on the Net nearly since it's inception. It would never have become manageable without search engines. I honestly remember looking at books which were simply pages and pages of difficult URL listings. Even though there were only a fraction of today's active domain names, it was a pretty bulky and unintuitive way of finding information. Yahoo began similarly just moving resources located by humans into a database. Having the computer do the search seemed logical but rather a miracle at the time.Additionally, I have had my own 'stuff' on the WWW for years and years. I find it interesting how the search results from today's three major engines differ. Okay, we all do it, so we may as well admit it. Nearly everyone sometimes searches for what comes up under their names. There's a fairly well-known person who shares my name. He's been involved in the submarine business for nearly twenty-five years. Sometimes, I come across information on that Dennis Hurd.
Generally, I do quite well on the search rankings though. I am tops on the three main engines. I have discovered there are some differences. If one is looking for real info about me, the newly renamed Microsoft Bing gives the best overall results. For example, it provides my main pages on Flickr and Facebook as well as my blog. Yahoo is hands-down the best when searching for images of me as it integrates Flickr. Even the majority of the photos that aren't of me are by me. Finally, Google is the best at producing the most complete historical records, even though it's a bit messy. It probably has the largest number of links to my name, although they may come up on pages quite far from the top rankings.