In October 1996 the homepage at lycos.com was a narrow white column. A small wordmark with a globe for its O sat beside the line It's amazing where Go Get It will get you.
Below it were one search box labeled Find:
, a button that said Go Get It
and two rows of blue links.
Scrub through the captures with the slider, or read on.
This is the story of lycos.com's front page from 1996 to 2026, told through 31 captures, one per year. Lycos began in 1994 as a research project at Carnegie Mellon University and took its name from wolf spiders, which chase their prey instead of waiting in a web. The 1996 page told you to go get it. By 2000 a black dog was doing the fetching: first in small drawings next to the search box, then in the logo, and in 2014 across the whole screen. Along the way lycos.com became a portal of mail, chat, games and shopping, was the subject of a $12.5 billion stock deal in 2000 and a $36 million one in 2010, and is still online in 2026.
The small print is where the fun is: a search menu that could also track a UPS parcel, a Spanish greeting for Terra in a capture taken four days after the deal was announced, a homepage that prints its own HTML tags, and a weather corner that names a different city almost every year.
1996 It's amazing where Go Get It will get you
Our oldest capture is from October 22, 1996. Everything is centered and small. A text link at the very top reads For serious sports fans only! Play Fantasy Football!
Under the search box comes a banner that crams a Netscape Now button, an INVEST $100K
offer and an Internet Explorer badge into one strip.
Then two rows of links, from New Search
and TopNews
to Club Lycos
and Help
.
The footer holds the oldest clue: Lycos is a trademark of Carnegie Mellon University.
Michael Mauldin built the search engine there in 1994. It opened to the public on July 20, 1994, with a catalog of 54,000 documents.[2] On December 18 that year his project page reported a hardware problem in plain words: Since my Pentiums haven't arrived yet, I have donated my own workstation to the cause as the Lycos3 server.
[1] By November 1996, a month after this capture, he counted over 60 million indexed documents.[2]
Lycos comes from Lycosidae, a cosmopolitan family of relatively large active ground spiders that catch their prey by pursuit, rather than in a web.The same page adds that they are
noted for their running speed.[1]
1997 – 1998 UPS Tracking # in the search menu
By December 1997 a black bar runs across the top with the Lycos wordmark, and the rest of the page renders in a typewriter-style font in our capture. The search menu is set to The Web
. Its code lists the other choices: Sounds, Pictures, TOP 5%, Personal Homepages, UPS Tracking #
, Books, Stock Symbol, Recipes and Newsgroups. One box searched the web, found a recipe and tracked your parcel.
Below it, under WEB GUIDES: Pick a guide, then explore the Web!
, sit 18 categories from Autos to Travel, including Fashion and Space/Sci-Fi. The footer offers Jobs4You
, New2Net
and Free Software
, and still says Lycos is a registered trademark of Carnegie Mellon University
.
The January 1998 capture is the same page. Only the copyright year has moved, to 1998. A few weeks later WIRED reported that Lycos would pay $58 million in stock for Tripod, a community site with 941,000 members.[3] Keep an eye on that name. Tripod's link is still on lycos.com in 2026.
1999 Index of Web Guides
The January 1999 page puts INDEX OF WEB GUIDES
in capitals under the search box, with 22 categories and two or three links under each. Fashion offers Supermodels
. Space/Sci-Fi offers X-Files
. The search menu in the code has grown to 13 choices, adding Reuters News, Weather and Message Boards, and UPS Tracking #
is still one of them.
Near the top a line says Click here to make a difference.
At the bottom, Get Lycos in:
lists ten countries, from Germany to Japan.
This capture is three months after a relaunch. The Los Angeles Times reported that Lycos timed a TV campaign to the launch of its improved site on October 19, 1998.[4] The ads starred a smart, obedient black Labrador retriever named Lycos, who speedily fetches random items at his master's command.
In one spot, shown a photo of Claudia Schiffer, the dog dashes off. Several images are missing from this capture, and no dog appears in it. That changes in the next one.
2000 ¿Hablas español?
The May 20, 2000 capture is a full portal. The black bar carries the wordmark with its O drawn as an eclipse. Links at the top promise Earn $$ for writing reviews
and Enter to See Pearl Jam Live
. And the dog has arrived: a small black dog sits beside the search box holding a FREE ISP
sign.
The news box is dated May 19, 2000 and leads with Rudy Giuliani Quits Senate Race
and 'NewLove' Virus Threatens Computers
. The weather says Boston, cloudy, 44°F.
The real news is in one Spanish line near the bottom: ¿Hablas español? ¡Echa un vistazo a Terra.com, nuestro nuevo socio!
Do you speak Spanish? Take a look at Terra.com, our new partner. Four days earlier, on May 16, Spain's Terra Networks had agreed to buy Lycos in an all-stock deal valued at $12.5 billion.[5][6]
2001 – 2002 About Terra Lycos
In June 2001 the page sells Father's Day. Remember Dad on June 17th
, says one link, and the dog appears again, a small drawing of it holding a book next to Father's Day Books
. Lycos Sports promotes Anna Kournikova. Under Best Bets
sits a Free Lycos Browser
, and the Lycos Top 50 hot searches that week are Tomb Raider, Pearl Harbor and the NBA Finals.
By January 2002 the page is yellow and blue. The dog walks along the top of the LYCOS TOPICS
menu.
A link offers Hosting $9.95 with Free Domain
. The Top 50 that week ranks NFL 5th, Taxes 10th, Enron 25th and Black Hawk Down 50th. The footer still has a link called About Terra Lycos
, and a box headed ¿Hablas Español?
invites you to Experience the Web of El Mundo Hispano at Terra.com
.
2003 – 2004 Introducing the new Lycos
In May 2003 the dog runs across the yellow header, right beside the search box. The Lycos Topics menu now includes Blogs. The boxes below promote a Survivor Amazon
slideshow and a start page (Make Lycos.com your start page and gateway to the Web...
), and the footer says Visit Terra Lycos Worldwide
.
The April 2004 page calls itself Welcome to Lycos!
in the browser tab. This capture renders largely unstyled, as bare links over one big banner: Introducing the new Lycos. Building relationships ... every kind, every day.
The banner goes on: Make new friends and rediscover old ones. Start a romance. Compete in online games.
A Fun Search
menu suggests Was the TX Chainsaw Massacre true?
, and the Lycos 50 lists Top Supermodels, Brooke Burke first.
The footer still says About Terra Lycos
. Four months later Reuters reported that Daum Communications of South Korea would buy Terra's US portal business for $95 million, while Terra kept the European business and Terra Networks USA, its Spanish-language US portal.[7]
2005 – 2006 Always, Sometimes, Never
The January 2005 page is a search page first: yellow, with tabs for Web, People, Discussion, News, Yellow Pages, Products and Multimedia. Under the box you choose Block Offensive Content: Always, Sometimes, Never
. The Lycos 50 Search Trends box lists Top Women, from Paris Hilton to Hilary Duff. Lycos Circles offers Free 1GB storage
and promises You control who sees what!
The footer still credits Carnegie Mellon University for the trademark.
On January 1, 2006 the page is grey and blue, with a Wired News box: Best (and Worst) Gadgets of 2005
, which weighs the Xbox 360, Video iPod, PSP, nano, Treo 650
. A HOLIDAY SWEEPSTAKES!
offers an Xbox 360 and an iPod Nano, and the Lycos 50 top fads run from Poker and iPod down to Crochet. The copyright line still says 2005.
By Robert Strohmeyer.<br /><strong>Plus:</strong>, tags and all.
2007 – 2009 Wasting your time since 1996
Our June 2007 capture has a dark frame and features LYCOS MIX
in the middle, to Watch, Share, & MIX your favorite videos from YouTube, MySpace and Google Video.
Down the left run Sign up for email (3 GB storage
), Build a website, Write a blog, Share photos and Lycos Cinema. A featured blog from Gamesville carries the best tagline on any Lycos page: Wasting your time since 1996
.
The January 2, 2008 capture puts a Santa hat on the dog in the logo. The Lycos 50 lists the week's top search terms, Poker, Golf, Fashion, Christmas and Disney, with Happy New Year!
beneath them. Lycos Cinema suggests classic holiday films: invite your friends to chat while you watch
.
The weather box, set to Houston, has a Things To Do
list: Design your own clothing line
and Host a video game marathon
. In June 2009 the same frame advertises Father's Day gifts, and the weather box, now in Oakland, suggests Act like a robot
.
2010 – 2011 Go get it!
On August 17, 2010 the homepage is a white card on a blue page. A standing black dog sits next to the wordmark, and under it is a line in italics: Go get it!
The slogan of the 1996 page is now part of the logo. A Things to do
list runs from Check Mail
to Search YellowPages
, with Play Games, Win Prizes
and Get Daily Deals
in between.
The capture is from the day Ybrant Digital announced an agreement to buy Lycos from Daum for $36 million.[8] Nothing on the page mentions it.
June 2011 keeps the blue card. A Featured Tripod Member Website
shows off a fraternity chapter in Buffalo, and the news box reports Giffords released from Houston hospital
.
2012 – 2013 BARK
In June 2012 the page turns into tiles: big colored squares under a bigger dog logo, for Mail, News, Weather, Entertainment, Gamesville, Pirate Cove Bingo, YouTube Videos, Shopping, Tripod and Chat. The Gamesville tile says Play free games & win: $4,237
. The Follow Us
tile writes BARK
beside the Twitter, Facebook and Vimeo logos.
The weather tile shows a sun and 60°
.
Null, and an image labeled
No weather found.
The June 2013 capture keeps the grid with new tiles, among them Politics, Fruit Frenzy and a news tile reading Iran Elects Hassan Rouhani As Its New President
. The weather tile says 62°, with the same fallback text in its code.
2014 – 2016 Simplify Your Digital Life.
In June 2014 the dog takes the whole screen. A real black dog sits in pink heather, a small search box floats over the photo, and a pale band says Simplify Your Digital Life.
The weather corner reads San francisco 65°
. The menu is a row of faint words along the top. In the code, Lycos Shopping has its own tagline: You shop. We search. You save.
In October 2015 the photo slider shows colored rings and a wristband: Lycos has recently launched a suite of wearable devices
. According to The Verge, the Lycos Band was to sell for $124.99 and the Ring for $59.99, using NFC to unlock your phone when nearby.[9] A Life
link joins the menu in the code.
By June 2016 the line under the logo is Enables Excitement.
and the slide reads Coming Soon. A new lycos.com
, beside a picture of that new page. The code explains: Prepare for the future of Lycos.com, a new modern design that leaves nothing out.
2017 – 2019 A city, a logo and a search box
The new lycos.com arrives as a photograph. In June 2017 it is San Francisco at dusk, the bridge in front and the dog logo beside a long search box. Under the photo a strip called The World News
carries headlines about Uber and Indonesia's Ramadan shopping.
The photo is a slider. Our June 2018 still shows its black-and-white New York slide, with the Statue of Liberty, and the news strip is gone. Our June 2019 still shows San Francisco.
In our later captures the design hardly moves, so read the link row under the photo instead. In 2018 and 2019 it still ends with WHOWHERE?
and ANGELFIRE
. WhoWhere was an Internet directory that, according to WIRED, sold itself to Lycos for $133 million in stock in August 1998.[10] Twenty-one years later its link was still there.
2020 – 2026 Happy New Years
The January 2020 capture shows a city at night, and the WhoWhere link is gone. In its code the photo slider has four slides, each captioned Happy New Years
. Our June 2021 capture has a Lycos SWAG
link at the left of the link row, which by then keeps Mail, Tripod, Domains, Weather and Angelfire.
The weather corner is the one thing that keeps moving. In the captures we read it names San Francisco from 2014 to 2018, Mount Vernon in 2019, 2020 and 2024, and Ashburn in 2021. In January 2026 it says Staatsoper 33° F
.
That January 2026 page is the same night-city photo as 2020, with the same four Happy New Years
captions in its code.
1996 → 2026 Still a dog with a search box
When we read the live lycos.com on October 10, 2026, the photo was gone. The page headed itself Private search · News · Tools
and said Search the web without a profile built around you.
[11] We don't know when that change happened. In our January 2026 capture the black dog still stands in front of the wordmark, and the link row still offers Tripod, the site WIRED reported Lycos was buying in 1998.
The 1996 page said Go Get It
. The name still comes from a spider that hunts without a web. The picture next to it is still a dog.
- When was the oldest lycos.com homepage in this story archived?
- The oldest capture here is from October 22, 1996, in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Lycos in October 1996: a globe in the logo, “It's amazing where Go Get It will get you.” and a search box labeled “Find:”.
- What does the lycos.com homepage look like in 2026?
- In the newest capture here (January 1, 2026): Lycos in January 2026: a city at night, the dog logo and a weather corner reading “Staatsoper 33° F”.
- How many Lycos homepage captures does this story show?
- 31 captures between 1996 and 2026, at most one per year; the timeline above shows which years are included.
- How did the Lycos logo change on its homepage?
- The logo evolution below shows 7 logo versions we picked from the captures, from 1996, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012. Logos from before 1996, the first capture, aren't included.
1996Globe-in-the-O wordmark
2003Black hound above a round LYCOS badge on blue
2004White LYCOS on a black pill, the O an eclipse
2006Eclipse dropped: plain black block letters
2008White LYCOS on blue with a sitting dog
2010Blue wordmark with a standing dog and 'Go get it!'
2012Bold black LYCOS next to a black dog
Each logo is cut from that year's homepage capture (the year is the capture's); click one to see it on the page. Logos from before the first capture (1996) aren't shown, and some are missing where the logo images don't render in our captures. More logo histories.
◀ drag ▶19962026
The oldest capture in this story (1996) over the newest (2026). Drag across the picture.
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Adobe.com, 1996–2023From “Get Acrobat Reader” to “Start free trial”Sources
Each screenshot links to its dated Wayback capture. Observations about layouts and wording refer to those screenshots; menus, image labels, slide captions and other text read from a page's code are identified as such. External history uses the sources below.
- Michael L. Mauldin · the Lycos project page at Carnegie Mellon University, 1994, preserved by its author. Read source ↗Source for the December 18, 1994 workstation note and the Lycosidae etymology.
- Michael L. Mauldin · “Lycos: Design choices in an Internet search service”, IEEE Internet Computing, 1997. Read source ↗Source for the July 20, 1994 public start with 54,000 documents and over 60 million indexed documents by November 1996.
- WIRED · “Lycos Finds Tripod a Steal at US$58 Million”, February 3, 1998. Read source ↗Source for the $58 million stock price and Tripod's 941,000 members.
- Los Angeles Times · report on the Lycos advertising campaign, November 19, 1998. Read source ↗Source for the black Labrador named Lycos, the Claudia Schiffer spot and the October 19, 1998 site launch.
- WIRED · “Lycos, Terra Merge”, May 16, 2000. Read source ↗Source for Terra Networks agreeing to buy Lycos for $12.5 billion in stock.
- The Washington Post · “Spain's Terra To Buy Lycos”, May 2000. Read source ↗Second source for the $12.5 billion stock deal.
- Reuters via WIRED · “South Korean Company Buys Lycos”, August 2, 2004. Read source ↗Source for Daum buying Terra's US portal business for $95 million and Terra keeping the European portal.
- Ybrant Digital via PR Newswire · “Ybrant Buys Lycos for $36 Million”, August 17, 2010. Read source ↗Source for the $36 million agreement with Daum and the network's US audience figure.
- The Verge · report on the Lycos Band and Ring, June 4, 2015. Read source ↗Source for the $124.99 Band, the $59.99 Ring and NFC phone unlocking.
- WIRED · “Lycos Gobbles Up WhoWhere”, August 11, 1998. Read source ↗Source for WhoWhere selling to Lycos for $133 million in stock.
- Lycos · the live homepage, read October 10, 2026. Open ↗Source for “Private search · News · Tools” and the line under it.
We selected one homepage capture of lycos.com for every year from 1996 to 2026, 31 in all, shot at 1440 pixels wide, with a link to each original Wayback capture. The browser frames are illustrations of the eras. Some images are missing in several captures, among them 1999, 2006, 2010 and 2011, and the 2004 capture renders largely unstyled. We captured the 2015 and 2016 pages with JavaScript disabled; each still shows one slider slide. Most captures are from June; the others are from October 1996, December 1997, January (1998, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2020, 2026), April 2004, May 2000 and 2003, August 2010 and October 2015. Menus, image labels, weather lines and slide captions come from each capture's HTML and are named as such.
PageRewind is independent and is not affiliated with Lycos. Screenshots and trademarks appear for historical commentary; archived pages are provided by the Internet Archive.
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