Major Search Engines and Directories

    Now, we get to the part where we talk about the performance of these major search engines and directories. As seen in the results of studies for search engine market shares, major search engines can be determined by how popular or how often internet surfers make search queries on them.

    Search Engine Watch (http://searchenginewatch.com) provides tons of useful information and inside for webmasters and curious internet surfers who want to know more about major search engines and directories.

    Here is just a short intro, search engines and directories are said to differ in the manner by which they are maintained. Simply put, directories like Yahoo are edited by humans, but they are still efficient ways to make your site well known. A website can be more easily crawled or searched if it is submitted manually to a directory or a search engine, such as Yahoo or Google.
Going back to Search Engine Watch, here is a list of search engines and directories in which websites are highly recommended to be submitted to. They have conveniently labeled them into categories such as Top Choices, Strongly Consider, and Other Choices.

    Among the Top Choices are Google, Yahoo, and Ask.com. You may also want to check out their lists for Strongly Consider search engines and directories like AlltheWeb, AOL, and Hotbot. The Other Choices based on Search Engine Watch are AltaVista, GigaBlast, Live, NetScape, and DMOZ Open Directory.

    You will get more in-depth information about the powerhouses Google and Yahoo in the chapter for major search engines and directories, which is chapter 5 in this website. Here, a short discussion on the background on some of these recommendations will be given.

    Ask.com – This search engine originally was AskJeeves.com, and was founded in 1996 by two Californians, David Warthen and Garreyy Gruener. The headquarters for Ask.com is located in Oakland, California, and the revenue for this company reached over $227 million.

    There are currently international offices for Ask.com, in which it operates for specific regions like Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Germany. Ask.com also came up with their own version of a toolbar, available for Internet Explorer and Firefox, which makes it easier for surfers to get the stuff they need.

    HotBot – This search engine began as an offshoot from Wired Magazine, and was launched in May of 1996. HotBot was said to be among the first search engines to have the technology to make searches within search results. It was in 1998 when HotBot was acquired by Lycos, and during this time, this search engine became less popular, following the launch of Google and Teoma.

    AlltheWeb – In 1999, this search engine originally was owned by a company called FAST, which developed new methods of indexing web pages. It was in 2003 when Overture purchased AlltheWeb, and eventually became absorbed by Yahoo.

    Sources say that AlltheWeb is a simpler place to check out if you want customizable search results. Plus, you can perform searches for mp3 files, FTP, pictures, and video on AlltheWeb as well.

    AltaVista – Born in 1995 through the efforts of Michael Burrows and Louis Monier, who wrote the indexer and crawler for the search engine. AltaVista was among the very first search engines that became popular during these years because of the user interface that was said to be minimalist. Plus, AltaVista had Scooter, which was a multi-thread crawler that covers a lot more web area for searching in less time as compared to its contemporary search engines.

    Like AlltheWeb, AltaVista was acquired by Overture, and eventually AltaVista fell under the jurisdiction of Yahoo when Overture was purchased by the said company in 2004.

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