I was playing with Google’s “2001 Web” search engine and found a few interesting keywords to type in. Many things that are exploding on the web right now where not even heard of seven years ago and some of them, like YouTube turns up nothing. YouTube has become a part of our culture and it turns up zero search results in 2001.

Social Media Marketing – 0 results. Had not even been coined yet.

Shoemoney – 4 results (although non of them are relevant or working)

YouTube – 0 results in 2001, now has over 1 billion.

Web 2.0 – The birth of web 2.01 in 2001, only 2,470 results compared to over 99 million today.

Ajax – No results for asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Now has over 118 million.

Barack Obama – Only 772 results in 2001, now has over 77 million.

iPod – 1,300 results, Apple is not even on the first page. Now has 419 million results.

problogger – 0 results in 2001. Now has over 1.2 million.

gas prices – 145,000 results in 2001, now over 33.6 million.

Another weird thing to do is type in other keywords to see what was big news back then. For instance, I typed in iTunes and saw a headline that iTunes had just topped 275,000 downloads. They probably do that on a daily basis now. Bill Gates even had his own website back in 01′ (first result).