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Do you know?
Letting Search engine working for you!
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 so much 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.
Not all of the services below are "true" search engines
that crawl the web. For instance, Yahoo and the Open Directory both are
"directories" that depend on humans to compile their listings.
In fact, most of the services below offer both search engine and
directory information, though they will predominately feature one type
of results over the other. See the How
Search Engines Work page to understand more about the difference
between search engines and directories. For the latest news and reviews about these services,
be sure to sign-up for one of our free newsletters!
If you are looking to get found via these search engines, then consider
becoming a Search Engine Watch member,
to gain access to detailed
information about how they work.
AllTheWeb.com (FAST Search)
http://www.alltheweb.com
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
http://www.altavista.com AltaVista is one of the oldest crawler-based search engines on the web.
It has a large index of web pages and a wide range of
power searching commands. 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
http://search.aol.com/
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 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.
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.
Google
http://www.google.com 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
http://www.hotbot.com 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).
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.
iWon
http://www.iwon.com 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.
Inktomi
http://www.inktomi.com 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.
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. 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
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
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
http://search.msn.com Microsoft's MSN Search service is a LookSmart-powered directory of web
sites, with secondary results that come from Inktomi. Direct Hit data is also made available.
Netscape Search
http://search.netscape.com 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" web sites. Secondary
results come from Google. At the Netscape Netcenter portal
site, other search engines are also featured.
Open
Directory
http://dmoz.org/
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.
Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com 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 web site directory, having launched in late 1994.
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