Search Engine Wars: After the Smoke Clears Who's Still Standing?

There have been a lot of changes on the search engine front in the past year; so many that it's hard to keep track of who's still a major player, and who isn't. With so many services turning to "Pay for Submission" and "Pay per Click" models, there aren't a lot left that still accept free submissions. And of those that do, it's hard to tell exactly which ones are worth your time.

http://tinyurl.com/4uwpt With over a million listings, Yahoo is considered the largest search engine/directory online today. Yahoo's search index is a combination of sites crawled from the entire Web, and from Yahoo's own "hand built" directory. It's possible to be listed in their search results and not in their paid directory. To view just the listings in Yahoo's directory go to http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request Paying Yahoo for submission is not the only way to get listed there. Overture was also acquired by Yahoo and they run a pay for inclusion/PPC program called "Site Match" at http://www.altavista.com/addurl/ Since Yahoo owns Altavista, an easy way to get listed here is to submit via Yahoo's free service at 3) Google: http://www.inktomi.com/ Owned by Yahoo, Inktomi provides results to many engines and directories such as Iwon, MSN, Hotbot, and more. You'll have to use Overture's Site Match Program to get listed here. 5) The Open Directory Project: 6) Overture: Precision Match Local Match Content Match Site Match 7) Excite: http://www.LookSmart.com Keyword targeted listings appear on what they call the "The Looksmart Network." This includes such websites as Infospace, CNET, Mamma.com, Inktomi and others. This is strictly a pay for inclusion program where you choose the keywords you want your site to appear under and pay $.15 per click. For more on "Look Listings" see http://www.Zeal.com 9) AOL Search: 10) Hotbot http://search.msn.com/ Results are pulled mainly from Inktomi, with paid listings from Overture. These are titled "Sponsor Sites" and displayed at the top and bottom of their search results pages. To submit for free, go to... 12) Ask Jeeves: 13) Netscape Search: http://dmoz.org/add.html 14) Teoma: (AKA Direct Hit) http://insite.lycos.com/ Lycos also owns Hotbot and their results are primarily pulled from Fast and Inktomi, with some still coming from the ODP. Sponsored links appearing at the top and on the right hand side of the search results pages come from Lycos's paid inclusion program. Their paid inclusion program, called "InSite," charges an annual fee of $18.00 for the first URL and $12.00 for each URL submission after that. If you pay for submission you're guaranteed inclusion within 48 hours. 16) AllTheWeb.com: http://www.Gimpsy.com http://FindWhat.com http://Kanoodle.com http://Epilot.com http://BidClix.com There you have it; the top contenders still playing in the search engine games. Search engines and directories are always in a state of flux, so it's quite possible that by the time you read this, some of the information I've gathered for you may have changed. To keep abreast of of what's happening in the world of search engines, I strongly suggest visiting these sites and subscribing to their ezines: Search Engine Watch http://SearchEngineGuide.com/ High Rankings http://PayPerClickSearchEngines.com Bruce Clay has an excellent chart that shows the relationships of the search engines and who's feeding off of who that is continually updated at:

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