News Story

FirstFlight First on Google!

Marc Eisenstadt, Tuesday 20 Jun 2000

Peter Whalley’s FirstFlight Web Site has topped the Google search engine index, an achievement which relies entirely on the global popularity of the FirstFlight site itself. Unlike other search engines which make use of keywords and other ‘meta tag’ indexing operations, the highly popular Google site relies upon the number of links from the rest of Web pointing into the chosen site.

This means that FirstFlight, the site based on Whalley’s extensive work on the history and simulation of the early pioneers of flight, is itself a highly popular among colleagues and researchers in the area, including NASA and other aviation specialty sites.

To test out the index for yourself, visit Google (see link below) and type in the following two words: flight history. Getting listed first with a larger string of specific words is something that many sites can achieve, whereas a first place based on just two relatively common words is indicative of significant traffic to a site, and therefore the site’s high regard among colleagues. Though ‘first place’ carries no associated award, it is well known among web users that if a site doesn’t appear prominently and ‘early’ in a search listing, it may simply not get visited!