Throwback Thursday: LookSmart Search Engine Circa 1999

Do you remember LookSmart? Back in 1999, the LookSmart website looked like this:

Back in 1999, you could search the web from the site’s home page, or you could click on one of their categories, and then a few more clicks… and then finally get to their content. For example, there was shopping content:

This was essentially merely a list of search results, with plenty of featured sponsors and sponsored ads. And “article” from findarticles.com was #1 for the “shopping and services” search results/category. Today, most likely if I had a link from findarticles.com I wouldn’t think very highly of it. But apparently back in 1999, that type of content was “da bomb” and so good that it ranked so well on LookSmart.

Nowadays, in 2014, LookSmart is still around, and quite different than the 1999 version. Now search results are served through algoclicks.com, and I see “michigan.org” as the number one search result for “shopping”, above amazon.com, QVC, Google shopping, and Overstock.com.