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First Webs, Inc. |
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Rockford; Chicago; the World |
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Who Are The Major Search Engines (SE's) and Who Should I
List With?
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Search engines (SE's) have "size wars", where one engine tries to outdo the
other. It is not so important what the size or percentage market share is
of an SE, but whether they can deliver relevant content to it's visitors.
The summary chart below is just a really great article on how SE's stood at the
time it is written. Because of it's educational value, we have
reformatted the article and pasted it in the table below. The original
link and credit is displayed.
A lot has happened in the SE world
since this article was published, but I have not found as good an article as
this. As webmasters, we must make decisions on which engines to list with.
To us, the top 4 engines are still the top 4 engines. Yahoo! has ended its
partnership, purchased Overture and Alta Vista, and is now displaying it's own
results on Yahoo! Search Engine. So the major playing field is Yahoo!
Search and Google, then include MSN and AOL. If you get listed in Google,
you're in AOL. Other selections may depend on the nature of your business
and your budget. |
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Chart Key
Search Providers:
These are listed at the top of
each column. Read down to see what they power at major search engines. Click on
their names to learn more about them.
Search Engines: These are listed
at the beginning of each row, in order of share of searches shown on the
comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings page. Here's a guide to the
color coding:
Dark Orange: search
engines with 25 percent or greater share.
Light
Orange: search engines with 10 percent or greater share.
Light
Blue: search engines with 1 percent share or greater
share.
Gray:
search engines with less than 1 percent share. They are shown only because of
the name recognition they may still have among some long-time searchers or
marketers.
Main: Indicates that a search
provider provides the "main" editorial results to a particular search engine,
the most dominant listings that will be seen.
Paid: Indicates that a search
provider provides paid placement listings to a particular search engine. Also
see the
Buying Your Way In page for detailed information about paid listing
partnerships.
Backup: Indicates that a search
provider provides the "backup" results that appear in cases where a search
engine's main results fail to find good matches. See the
Search Engine Results Page for more about backup or fall through results.
Option: If shown in the notes
section, Indicates that information from this source is made available either on
results pages or in other ways, though the prominence of the information may not
be high.
Dates: Where shown, dates indicate
when a particular partnership is due for renewal. Dates are shown in MM/DD/YY or
similar format. |
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Who Powers Whom? Chart |
Search Engine
(Read Down) |
Provider:
Google |
Provider:
Yahoo/Overture |
Notes |
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Google |
Main & Paid |
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Open Directory an option |
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Yahoo |
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Main & Paid |
Yahoo Directory an option |
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MSN |
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Main & Paid
(12/05 & 6/05) |
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AOL |
Main & Paid (est. 10/05+) |
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AOL-owned Open Directory an option |
Excite
Network |
Main & Paid (at iWon, MyWay, My Web Search) |
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Excite.com
is InfoSpace-powered |
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Ask Jeeves |
Paid (until 2007) |
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Main from Ask-
owned
Teoma. |
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InfoSpace |
Runs several
meta search engines.
Dogpile is the most popular, representative of others. Google (2006),
Yahoo (3/06) & many
small providers have distribution deals. |
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AltaVista |
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Main & Paid |
Open Directory an option; owned by Yahoo |
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AllTheWeb |
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Main & Paid |
Owned by Yahoo |
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HotBot |
Paid (see
note) |
Main |
Backup from Google & Ask;
Owned by Lycos |
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Lycos |
Paid (see
note) |
Backup
(see note) |
Main from
LookSmart;
Open Directory an option |
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Netscape |
Main & Paid (est. 10/05+) |
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Owned by AOL;
Open Directory
an option |
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Teoma |
Paid (Sept 05) |
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Main from Teoma; owned by Ask;
Paid canned as early as 9/04 |
Notes:
AOL renewed its deal with Google in
October 2003 but did not specify exactly how long the partnership would last.
Date shown is the minimum length estimated by Search Engine Watch, based on past
deals between the two companies.
Excite
Network
is a collection of search sites owned by Ask
Jeeves. For more details, see the
comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings page.
Lycos
has an existing contract with Yahoo-owned Overture
for paid results running through May 2006. However, the company switched to
Google in November 2003 due to a contract dispute. Google paid results also
appear on Lycos-owned HotBot.com. For more, see coverage on the dispute from
InternetNews.com,
News.com
and
CBS MarketWatch. Lycos also runs its own paid listings in addition to those
from Google on Lycos and HotBot. See
Terra Lycos To Launch Paid Placement Network for more about this. A deal
struck for backup results from the now Yahoo-owned AllTheWeb site was to expire
on December 31, 2003. There's been no news of any renewal. The AllTheWeb search
engine no longer uses its own technology. Instead, Lycos uses Yahoo main results
(and flags these as being from Inktomi).
Yahoo
main results come from its own crawler-technology.
These results often look different on sites that Yahoo powers, such as MSN and
Lycos, when compared to the same search at Yahoo itself. This is because Yahoo
operates its own unique ranking algorithm on its own site. Yahoo paid results
come from the
Overture paid placement listings service that it owns. The Yahoo-owned
Inktomi search engine no longer operates, though Yahoo-partner Lycos may still
say that results are coming from Inktomi. |
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Quick View of
comScore Media Metrix Search Engine Ratings article mentioned above. See article for details. |
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The pie chart above shows
the percentage of searches done by US web surfers in December 2004 that were
performed at a particular web site or a network of web sites. Note that
note all search engines use their own technology. |
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The chart above shows the share of searches on a
href="http://searchenginewatch.com/reports/article.php/2156401"> search provider basis. |
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