Search Engine Reference

Site Vigil checks a web site's position on all major search engines.

Although you may find hundreds of Search Engines when you look at various site submission programs there are only a handful that can deliver a significant number of visitors.

The following table gives some information and recent statistics on all the popular search engines :

Search Engine	Share	Location	Notes
Google ➚	56%	Mountain View, California	Continue to take an increasing market share. Particular importance is paid to the links referring to a web site. Uses the DMOZ directory both for searching for sites and as a directory. Provide data for AOL, Netscape, Yahoo!, iWon amongst many over search engines. This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
Yahoo! ➚	21%	Sunnyvale, California	Provide search results from their Inktomi subsidiary company and now also provided to the search engines it has swallowed up : AllTheWeb and AltaVista. It is the biggest competitor to Google even though somewhat strangely it used Google for search results for a long while. It also may be worth noting their name, believed, possibly apocryphal, to come from the acronym 'You also have other options'. This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
MSN ➚	9%	Microsoft Service Network, Redmond, Washington	Microsoft would like to be the leaders in search engine technology just like they do in other market sectors. Fortunately or unfortunately, they haven't yet come up with anything particularly special with their MSN community search engine. It used to just use result data from Looksmart but now (from October 2003) uses their own technology and data. Their new offering is fast and currently advertisement free. With the giant financial resources of Microsoft they have the muscle to change the search engine sector. This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
AOL ➚	4%	(America OnLine Time Warner) AOL Way, Dulles, Virginia	Uses other search engine results. Google are the main supplier of data for searches (from alliance in may 2002). Their directory uses data from DMOZ ➚. This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
Ask Jeeves ➚	<2%	Emeryville, California	Their directory uses data from DMOZ ➚. Has search data from Teoma and other sources. Many loyal users. It's interface was originally marketed as answering questions rather than just keywords, but this rarely works out any better than using keywords. This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
Lycos ➚	2%	Terra Networks, Spain	Now, uses other search engine's data but still has a loyal following. Recent lay-offs indicate the company is not in the best of financial health. This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
Alta Vista ➚	2%	Part of Overture	Used to be the big pioneer search engine. As of April 2004 it's part of the burgeoning Overture (Yahoo!) empire and results should be the same as for Yahoo! Origins are at DEC's Palo Alta laboratories back in 1995. They also developed the web page translator Babel Fish ➚ . This name comes from Douglas Adam's ground breaking book Hitchiker's guide to the galaxy ➚ This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
HotBot ➚	<1%	Part of Lycos	Now part of Lycos so should give results identical to Lycos. Another take-over of a struggling independent search engine that no longer paid its way.
Excite ➚	<1%	Part of Ask Jeeves	Used to be a major, independent player in their own right. Now they get their data from other sources especially Overture. They no longer live up to their name, it's a very old-fashioned looking general portal. It is now owned by 'Ask Jeeves'. This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
Teoma ➚	<1%	Part of Ask Jeeves	Used to be an independent search engine company. Results are now in a similar style to Ask, as you might expect.
AllTheWeb ➚	<1%	Part of Overture	Yahoo! own Overture, so it's expected to give the same results as Yahoo!
About ➚	<1%	New York	Now only have a search for their own, but fairly large set of information pages.
A9 ➚	<1%	Palo Alto, California	Uses all the data from it's mighty parent Amazon ➚ to give personalised results slanted towards their online bookstore contents. This can make some searches much more likely to find relevant results. If you haven't tried it, give it a whirl. A search engine that's on the up. This engine can be monitored by Site Vigil
Enhance ➚	<1%	Seattle, Washington	Renamed from 'ah-ha.com'. Not a big player, provides data for a number of very small search engines. Nearly all paid for listings.
iWon ➚	<1%	Irvington, New York	More of a complete portal rather than a search engine. It's more of a community with regular e-mail notifications about competitions. Games are included with rewards to keep users coming back. The search engine data is indirect, a blend from Google, Ask, Yahoo and Looksmart.
Looksmart ➚	<1%	San Francisco, California	Has moved to paid for listing based on click throughs. They provide search data for a number of other search engines including Alta Vista, WebCrawler. They have an arrangement with the Zeal directory system and the directory is given prominence in their search result listings.
Netscape ➚	<1%	Now part of AOL Time Warner	They originally set up and ran DMOZ on a non-profitable basis. Their search results come courtesy of Google. Another spent force in the search engine market.

And here are some of the important directories for web sites :

Click the link to learn more about how search engines work.

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