Search Engine Considerations -
Search Engines Optimization

The major search engines (see list below) can account for 95% of your search engine traffic, so understanding them is critical in determining how well your site ranks.

The Major Search Engines

The following is a listing of the "majors", a little info about each one, and a hyperlink to each one.

AOL Search
http://search.aol.com/
From within AOL Search its members can search across the web and AOL's own content from one place. The "external" version, listed above, does not list AOL content. The main listings for categories and web sites come from the Open Directory (see below). Inktomi (see below) also provides crawler-based results, as backup to the directory information. Before the launch of AOL Search in October 1999, the AOL search service was Excite-powered AOL NetFind.

AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/
AltaVista is one of the largest search engines on the web, in terms of pages indexed. Its comprehensive coverage and wide range of power searching commands makes it a particular favorite among researchers. It also offers a number of features designed to appeal to basic users, such as "Ask AltaVista" results, which come from Ask Jeeves (see below), and directory listings primarily from the Open Directory.

Ask Jeeves
http://www.askjeeves.com/
Ask Jeeves is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your question. If it fails to find a match within its own database, then it will provide matching web pages from various search engines. Results from Ask Jeeves also appear within AltaVista.

Direct Hit
http://www.directhit.com/
Direct Hit is a company that works with other search engines to refine their results. It does this by monitoring what users click on from the results they see. Sites that get clicked on more than others rise higher in Direct Hit's rankings. Thus, the service dubs itself a "popularity engine." Direct Hit's technology is currently best seen at HotBot.

Excite
http://www.excite.com/
Excite is one of the most popular search services on the web. It offers a medium-sized index and integrates non-web material such as company information and sports scores into its results, when appropriate. Excite was launched in late 1995. It grew quickly in prominence and consumed two of its competitors, Magellan and WebCrawler, which run as separate services.

Go / Infoseek
http://www.go.com/
Go is a portal site produced by Infoseek and Disney. It offers portal features such as personalization and free e-mail, plus the search capabilities of the former Infoseek search service, which has now been folded into Go. Searchers will find that Go consistently provides quality results in response to many general and broad searches, thanks to its ESP search algorithm. It also has an impressive human-compiled directory of web sites.

GoTo
http://www.goto.com/
Unlike the other search engines, GoTo sells its listings, so we won't describe it much here. Some believe that GoTo doesn't necessarily provide the best results, because the best rankings are paid for rather than based on content.

Google
http://www.google.com/
Google is a search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web sites. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel," because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them.

HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com/
Like AltaVista, HotBot is another favorite among researchers due to its large index of the web and many power searching features. In most cases, HotBot's first page of results comes from the Direct Hit service (see above), and then secondary results come from the Inktomi search engine, which is also used by other services. It gets its directory information from the Open Directory project (see below).

LookSmart
http://www.looksmart.com/
LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of web sites. In addition to being a stand-alone service, LookSmart provides directory results to MSN Search, Excite and many other partners. AltaVista provides LookSmart with search results when a search fails to find a match from among LookSmart's reviews.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/
Lycos started out as a search engine, depending on listings that came from spidering the web. In April 1999, it shifted to a directory model similar to Yahoo. Its main listings come from the Open Directory project, and then secondary results come from either Direct Hit or Lycos' own spidering of the web. In October 1998, Lycos acquired the competing HotBot search service, which continues to be run separately.

MSN Search
http://search.msn.com/
Microsoft's MSN Search service is a LookSmart-powered directory of web sites, with secondary results that come from AltaVista. RealNames and Direct Hit data is also made available.

Netscape Search
http://search.netscape.com/
Netscape Search's results come primarily from the Open Directory (see below), which does an excellent job of listing "official" web sites. Secondary results come from Google.

Northern Light
http://www.northernlight.com/
Started in 1997, Northern Light is a favorite search engine among researchers. It features one of the largest indexes of the web. Northern Light also has a set of "special collection" documents that come from thousands of sources, including newswires, magazines and databases, for which they charge up to $4 to view. There is no charge to view documents on the public part of this database.

Open Directory
http://dmoz.org/
The Open Directory uses volunteer editors to catalog the web and very quickly became an important player in the industry when introduced in 1998. The company pledged that anyone would be able to use information from the directory through an open license arrangement. Netscape was the first licensee. Lycos and AOL Search also make heavy use of Open Directory data, and AltaVista and HotBot feature Open Directory categories within their results pages.

Snap
http://www.snap.com/
Snap is a human-compiled directory of web sites, supplemented by search results from Inktomi. Like LookSmart, it aims to challenge Yahoo as the champion of categorizing the web. Snap launched in late 1997 and is backed by Cnet and NBC.

WebCrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com/
WebCrawler has the smallest index of any major search engine on the web. The small index means WebCrawler is not the place to go when seeking obscure or unusual material. However, some people may feel that by having indexed fewer pages, WebCrawler provides less overwhelming results in response to general searches. WebCrawler opened to the public on April 20, 1994. It was started as a research project at the University of Washington. America Online purchased it in March 1995 and was the online service's preferred search engine until Nov. 1996. That was when Excite, a WebCrawler competitor, acquired the service. Excite continues to run WebCrawler as an independent search engine.

Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com
Yahoo, launched in late 1994, is the web's most popular search service and this largely due to the fact that human beings review each site. It is mainly a categorized directory, but also utilizes search results from Inktomi. Yahoo employs about 150 editors who have categorized over 1 million sites for us.

You can email us, call us at (937) 271-4041, or FAX us at
(937) 845-8294.