Updated: April 13, 2015
Welcome to SEO Advantage’s Trivia feature Friday, where we discuss, dissect and comment on the internet and marketing, and how the two intertwine.
What were the events of “Black Monday” in 1999?
- A. Many websites disappeared when the AltaVista search engine began using a new algorithm, as well as ranking and indexing websites.
- B. The day after Thanksgiving that internet sales began.
- C. New Google update made searching faster.
(See answer below)
Before the popularity of Google, AltaVista—driven by 130 GB of RAM and a 500 GB hard drive—handled 13 million search queries a day. This made AltaVista not only the first searchable database up until 1998, but one of the most popular. However, this popularity wasn’t meant to last…
In October of 1999, in order to keep up with the necessary changes surrounding internet searching, AltaVista rolled out a new algorithm. This algorithm update was supposed to allow for more efficient search rankings and better website indexing. Instead, numerous websites simply vanished from the internet. This event is now referred to as Black Monday.
In 2013, Yahoo announced that it would shut down AltaVista.
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Answer: A