Who Powers Who's Results in the Search Engines?

Update March 2005

Have you often wondered where the results are actually coming from in the search engines? Just how exactly different are the search search engines results? Today, we will cover the following Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Netscape, Teoma, AltaVista, AllTheWeb, HotBot, Lycos, Excite, and Ask Jeeves) and see who powers whom. So, out of the 12 search engines listed above, it may be surprising to the uninformed searcher that many of the search engines are pulling from just a few sources.

First, we will start with Google. With Google, both main and paid results are from Google with directory results powered by Open Directory. Search engines AOL and Netscape (owned by AOL) are pulling from the exact same database for its main, paid and directory results.

Secondly, we will review Yahoo. To bring you up to speed, Yahoo purchased, Overture, Inktomi, AllTheWeb and AltaVista. So, needless to say Yahoo, AllTheWeb and AltaVista are pulling from the Yahoo Database. Also, MSN is currently putting from the Yahoo Database as well. All of these search engines are using Overture as its paid results provider. HotBot kind of falls in this category. The default results come from Yahoo, but the user has the option to choose from Google and Ask Jeeves for different results.

MSN has just recently unveiled its new MSN Search. You may be wondering about MSN Search as it has been around for sometime. The thing was that it use to pull from Yahoo's database previously. It took quite sometime, but MSN finally developed its own database. If you happen to check your logs, you may have noticed MSNbot showing. This is MSN's spider that is indexing and crawling your website.

Thirdly, we come to Ask Jeeves. Ask Jeeves pulls its data from Teoma. Teoma is owned by Ask Jeeves. Currently there is no add url for Teoma. It is expected that their paid inclusion can end any month now.

Fourthly, Lycos is pulling reslults from Ask Jeeves now. Lycos has its own paid advertising program that is also available on HotBot as well.

Last we have Excite, (which is owned by Ask Jeeves). The same searches done on Excite can be seen on  iWon, MyWay.com and My Web Search. Basically Excite pulls the top results from various search engines (a Meta Search Engine) and you can choose how you would like to view the results, either by most relevant or by search engine.

So, from the 12 search engines reviewed, we can see that there are 4 different databases that are being used amongst the lot. Those being Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves, 5 if you include Excite (a meta search engine). This really only leaves you with a few choices in the major search engines if you are looking for different results.

Gerard Manning
Search Engine Placement Specialist
Website Marketing by Manning Search Marketing