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| Major Search Engines
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The Major Search Engines Why are the services below considered to be the major search engines? They are all either well-known or well-used. For webmasters, these services are the most important places to be listed, because they can potentially generate lots of traffic. For searchers, these well-known, commercially-backed search engines generally mean more dependable results. These search engines are more likely to be well-maintained and upgraded when necessary, to keep pace with the growing web. About.com About.com, formerly the Mining Company, features hundreds of "guides" offering original content in various areas. While About.com isn't really a search service, the guides do have extensive links to other sites -- not to mention top-notch content of their own. AllTheWeb.com
(FAST Search) AllTheWeb.com (also known as FAST Search) consistently has one of the largest indexes of the web. FAST also offers large multimedia and mobile/wireless web indexes, available from its site. The site, also known as AllTheWeb.com, is a showcase for FAST's search technologies. FAST's results are provided to numerous portals, including those run by Terra Lycos. FAST Search launched in May 1999. AltaVista AltaVista is one of the oldest crawler-based search engines on the web. It also offers news search, shopping search and multimedia search. AltaVista opened in December 1995. It was owned by Digital, then run by Compaq (which purchased Digital in 1998), then spun off into a separate company which is now controlled by CMGI. AOL
Search AOL Search allows its members to 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 come Inktomi (see below). Google is to replace Inktomi in the summer of 2002. Ask
Jeeves Ask Jeeves is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your question. It also integrates information from the Teoma service that it owns (see below). Ask Jeeves also owns the Direct Hit service, but results from Direct Hit are no longer offered directly though the Direct Hit site. Britannica.com Links to top websites and content from the Encyclopedia Britannica, in one place. Excite Excite results are dominated by paid listings from Overture, with non-paid results from Inktomi. Before Dec. 2001, Excite was a crawler-based search engine that gathered its own results. Excite was originally launched in late 1995. It grew quickly in prominence and consumed two of its competitors, Magellan in July 1996, and WebCrawler in November 1996. Magellan was discontinued in April 2001. WebCrawler continues to operate as a separate service, but it provides the same results at the Excite.com site itself. In Nov. 2001, Excite was acquired by InfoSpace, which also operates meta search engines Dogpile and MetaCrawler. Google Google is a top choice for web searchers. It offers the largest collection of web pages of any crawler-based search engine. Google makes heavy use of link analysis as a primary way to rank these pages. 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. The system works so well that Google has gained wide-spread praise for its high relevancy. Google provides web page search results to a variety of partners, including Yahoo and Netscape Search (see below). Google also provides the ability to search for images, through Usenet discussions and its own version of the Open Directory (see below). HotBot In most cases, HotBot's first page of results comes from the Direct Hit service (see Ask Jeeves, 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). HotBot launched in May 1996 as Wired Digital's entry into the search engine market. Lycos purchased Wired Digital in October 1998 and continues to run HotBot as a separate search service. |
Inktomi Originally, there was an Inktomi search engine at UC Berkeley. The creators then formed their own company with the same name and created a new Inktomi index, which was first used to power HotBot. Now the Inktomi index also powers several other services. All of them tap into the same index, though results may be slightly different. This is because Inktomi provides ways for its partners to use a common index yet distinguish themselves. There is no way to query the Inktomi index directly, as it is only made available through Inktomi's partners with whatever filters and ranking tweaks they may apply. iWon iWon's results come from both Overture & Inktomi. iWon gives away daily, weekly and monthly prizes in a marketing model unique among the major services. It launched in Fall 1999. LookSmart LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of websites. In addition to being a stand-alone service, LookSmart provides directory results to MSN Search, Excite and many other partners. Inktomi provides LookSmart with search results when a search fails to find a match from among LookSmart's reviews. LookSmart launched independently in October 1996, was backed by Reader's Digest for about a year, and then company executives bought back control of the service. Lycos 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 AllTheWeb.com with some results from the Open Directory project. In October 1998, Lycos acquired the competing HotBot search service, which continues to be run separately. MSN Search Microsoft's MSN Search service is a LookSmart-powered directory of websites, with secondary results that come from Inktomi. Direct Hit data is also made available. Netscape Search Netscape Search's results come primarily from the Open Directory and Netscape's own "Smart Browsing" database, which does an excellent job of listing "official" websites. Secondary results come from Google. At the Netscape Netcenter portal site, other search engines are also featured. Open
Directory The Open Directory uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly known as NewHoo, it was launched in June 1998. It was acquired by Netscape in November 1998, and the company pledged that anyone would be able to use information from the directory through an open license arrangement. Netscape itself was the first licensee. Netscape-owner AOL also uses Open Directory information, as does Google and Lycos. WebCrawler WebCrawler is essentially a copy of the Excite service, above. WebCrawler was originally a completely independent service, 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. Yahoo Yahoo is the web's most popular search service and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily. The secret to Yahoo's success is human beings. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing about 150 editors in an effort to categorize the web. Yahoo has well over 1 million sites listed. Yahoo also supplements its results with those from Google. If a search fails to find a match within Yahoo's own listings, then matches from Google are displayed. Google matches also appear after all Yahoo matches have first been shown. Yahoo is the oldest major website directory, having launched in late 1994
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