What’s A Major Search Engine?

I recently got a chance to look at a report that another Internet marketing firm, a large SEO and web design company, gave to one of its clients. I was appalled at the level of inaccuracies in the report and the attempt to snow the client. Without getting into the list of bogus keywords the company claimed to be tracking, here’s what they referred to as a “major search engine,” which the report claimed to offer a list of rankings for.

AllTheWeb
AltaVista
Ask.com
Google
Lycos
Metacrawler
MSN
Teoma
Webcrawler
Yahoo!

Are you kidding me? These are “major search engines?”

I know of only two major search engines: Google and Bing. All others are minor. But let’s pick apart this list.

Where Are The Search Engines Now?

AllTheWeb – AllTheWeb.com is no longer in business. Click the link. It redirects to Yahoo! Search, which owns it.
AltaVista – AltaVista.com is owned by Yahoo! Yahoo! has commented that it plans to shut AltaVista down although that hasn’t happened yet. But if you look at the bottom of the search page, you’ll see the copyright notice – it says “2011 Yahoo!”
Ask.com – Ask has gone through several transformations since its beginnings. Last year the company announced it would get out of the search business altogether. Visit the site and it appears to still provide search results. But the Ask share of the search market is usually lumped in with “other” and is in the single digits. I wouldn’t call that “major.”
Google – Google is still the king of the mountain.
Lycos - Lycos is still in business, but its share of search is lower than Ask.com’s.
Metacrawler - Metacrawler isn’t really a search engine. It’s a search aggregator. It returns search results from a variety of search engines and websites, which include Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, About.com, and LookSmart. I wouldn’t list it on a report about search rankings.
MSN – MSN isn’t a search engine. It’s the corporate owner of the search engine Bing, which used to be called LiveSearch. I didn’t see Bing anywhere on the list, did you? Bing is a major search engine and is Google’s largest competitor. By the way, the search results you see if you use MSNs website come from Bing.
Teoma – Teoma was purchased by Ask.com in 2001. It is owned by IAC, which is the corporate owner of Ask and delivers Ask results. Rather, it might be truer to say that Ask delivers Teoma results.
Webcrawler – Webcrawler is another search aggregator, or, what many people refer to as a meta search engine. It takes results from other search engines and blends them, just like Webcrawler. It takes its results from Google, Yahoo!, Bing, Ask, About.com, MIVA, and LookSmart. It’s owned by InfoSpace, the same company that owns Metacrawler and Excite, which wasn’t on the list either (and isn’t a major search engine).
Yahoo! – Yahoo! and Bing struck an agreement a couple of years ago that gives Bing control over Yahoo! search results. It effectively delivers Bing results now.

What’s the bottom line, here? Don’t let SEO companies snow you about your search rankings. They will try. If you see something strange on your SEO report, run for the hills. Or ask someone who won’t josh you.

Are These Smaller Search Engines Worth Your Time?

I wouldn’t write these smaller search engines off completely. They are worth tracking insofar as you want to see if they deliver traffic to your website. Some of them will, but it won’t be anywhere near the level of traffic you’ll get from Google and Bing (if you do your SEO right).

I wouldn’t focus a lot of energy on the smaller search engines. I’d just know they’re there.