The not so secret truth about all the early search engines was that they weren’t very good. They returned results in a way that could be comprehensive, but often had no accuracy. A search for, say, “windsurfing” might give you a list of every webpage in the world that mentioned the word “windsurfing,” but made no effort to sort for context. What was the best windsurfing site on the web? The search engines had no way of telling you. A more refined search for, say, “windsurfing in California” might return sites for windsurfing or California, but maybe not both. The searcher might find the State
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