How Search Engines Enabled Finding Needles in a WWW-Sized Haystack

When the World Wide Web surged into existence during the 1990s, we were introduced to the problem of how to actually find something in this ever-ballooning construction zone that easily outpaced even the fastest post-WW2 urban sprawl. Although domain names provided a way to find servers using DNS rather than having to mash in IP addresses, you still somehow had to know the relevant URL. A range of solutions were thought up over time, ranging from printed Yellow Pages type guides, to online curat