From what I recall, it was also the most programmer-friendly search engine at the time.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=DGGEVX
http://duckduckgo.com/?q=DGGEVX
http://www.google.com/#q=DGGEVX
This is purely subjective, but Google is the only one that links to the Netlib 'real' LAPACK, straight to the file/documentation in question. The others have mixtures of Java packages and other examples...