The Big Wigs

Searching has become a lucrative business, and as a result there are many competitors in the industry, each occupying their own niche. Over the last few years, there has been a flurry of mergers and acquisitions, as the major players grow ever larger. As a result, the search engine industry is essentially an oligopoly, with a few big guns ruling the roost with most of the market share.

The Bigwigs of Search


BigWig Type Powered By Comments
Google Search engine Own search technology Powers over 80% of searches performed internationally
Yahoo! Search engine and directory Own search technology and editors World's largest human directory until the switch to crawler-based results in Feb 2004.
MSN Search Search engine Own search technology Recently launched its own crawler-based technology; previously received results from Yahoo!
Ask Jeeves Search engine Teoma The first "natural language" search engine
All the Web Search engine Yahoo! Offering search for multimedia files
AOL Search Search Engine Google AOL's "internal" search engine
Hot Bot Search Engine Yahoo!, Google, Teoma
Teoma Search Engine Ask Jeeves
Alta Vista Search Engine Yahoo!
Lycos Directory and search engine Looksmart, Yahoo! One of the oldest search engines on the web
Netscape Search Search Engine Google Owned by AOL Time Warner
Looksmart Directory Commercial sponsored listings, own editors Also incorporates results from the Zeal directory
Open Directory Directory Own editors Feeds the Google Directory

Now that you know who the big wigs are in the search industry, isn't it time you start getting high rankings on them? We think so. Contact us to find out how.