JumpStation

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Early internet search engine

title: "JumpStation" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["defunct-internet-search-engines"] description: "Early internet search engine" topic_path: "general/defunct-internet-search-engines" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JumpStation" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Early internet search engine ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox website"]

FieldValue
nameJump Station
screenshotJumpstation.png
typeWeb search engine
languageEnglish
ownerJonathon Fletcher
launch_date
current_statusDefunct/Closed 1994
::

| name = Jump Station | logo = | screenshot = Jumpstation.png | caption = | collapsible = | collapsetext = | commercial = | type = Web search engine | language = English | registration = | programming_language= | owner = Jonathon Fletcher | launch_date = | current_status = Defunct/Closed 1994 | revenue = | alexa = JumpStation was the first WWW search engine that behaved, and appeared to the user, the way current web search engines do. It started indexing on 12 December 1993 and was announced on the Mosaic "What's New" webpage on 21 December 1993. It was hosted at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

It was written by Jonathon Fletcher, from Scarborough, England, who graduated from the University with a first class honours degree in Computing Science in the summer of 1992 and has subsequently been named "father of the search engine".

He was subsequently employed there as a systems administrator. JumpStation's development discontinued when he left the University in late 1994, having failed to get any investors, including the University of Stirling, to financially back his idea. At this point the database had 275,000 entries spanning 1,500 servers.

JumpStation used document titles and headings to index the web pages found using a simple linear search, and did not provide any ranking of results. However, JumpStation had the same basic shape as Google Search in that it used an index solely built by a web robot, searched this index using keyword queries entered by the user on a web form whose location was well-known, and presented its results in the form of a list of URLs that matched those keywords.

Nominations

JumpStation was nominated for a "Best Of The Web" award in 1994 and the story of its origin and development written up, using interviews with Fletcher, by Wishart and Bochsler.

References

References

  1. [http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Why_we_nearly_McGoogled_it&in_article_id=582089 Why we nearly McGoogled it] Metro, 15 March 2009
  2. [http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/user/mkgray/tmp/coolwwwmail Archive of email sent to Matt Gray]
  3. Archive of NCSA's [https://web.archive.org/web/20010620073530/http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/old-whats-new/whats-new-1293.html What's New, December 1993]
  4. [http://www.robotstxt.org/db/jumpstation.html The Web Robots Pages: JumpStation]
  5. [https://web.archive.org/web/20090328225441/http://www.slais.ubc.ca/COURSES/libr500/00-01-wt2/www/E_Hernandez/EarlySpiders.htm Robots, Spiders and Wanderers: Finding Information on the Web] archived 28 March 2009 from [http://www.slais.ubc.ca/COURSES/libr500/00-01-wt2/www/E_Hernandez/EarlySpiders.htm the original]
  6. [http://www.scotsman.com/latestnews/Googling-was-born-in-Stirling.5073256.jp Googling was born in Stirling] The Scotsman, 15 March 2009
  7. Miller, Joe. (3 September 2013). "Jonathon Fletcher: forgotten father of the search engine". BBC News.
  8. [https://web.archive.org/web/20090328134137/http://www.ambrosiasw.com/~fprefect/matrix/js.html Matrix, Search Engines: JumpStation] archived 28 March 2009 from [http://www.ambrosiasw.com/~fprefect/matrix/js.html the original]
  9. [http://www.searchenginehistory.com/ SearchEngineHistory.com]
  10. Oliver A. McBryan: GENVL and WWWW: Tools for Taming the Web, Oscar Nierstrasz (Ed.), Proceedings of the First International World Wide Web Conference, Geneva, Switzerland, May 1994 (Ref 9).
  11. [http://botw.org/1994/awards/navigate.html Best of the Web '94: Best Navigational Aid] Best of the Web
  12. Adam Wishart and Regula Bochsler: Leaving Reality Behind: etoys v eToys.com, and other battles to control cyberspace, Ecco, 2003, {{ISBN. 0-06-621076-3.

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