Best Search Engine List
Search Engine Services and Information

Powered by Yahoo, AllTheWeb has one of the largest search engine databases in the world, possibly even the largest. That said, it is important to achieve good search engine placement with AlltheWeb. AllTheWeb.com has the fastest average response of any search engine coming in at under a half a second per search.

AlltheWeb combines one of the largest and freshest indices and includes some of the most powerful search features in the industry. The AlltheWeb index includes billions of web pages as well as tens of millions of PDF and MS Word® files, and supports searching in 36 different languages.

Alta Vista
AltaVista is owned by Overture, which Yahoo! purchased in July 2003. It is powerful and fast, mainly used for pinpoint searching of narrow topics and people in the news. It is popular, because it successfully narrows topics.

AltaVista is one of the most inclusive indices, although not necessarily the best search engine for every use. AltaVista's main or organic results are supplied by Yahoo!, sponsored listings are from Overture, and the directory listings are provided by DMOZ.

AOL
Main and sponsored search results for AOL are provided by Google Search, while the main Directory results come from DMOZ, who is also owned by AOL. When there are no available results from one of these results providers, AOL receives secondary search results from Inktomi.

AOL takes Google's site listings and then uses their own algorithm to reorder the search results, and uses Google's Adwords product for sponsored entries. The bottom line is that although the top 25 search results with AOL will generally be pretty similar to Google, you can't assume it because AOL will sometimes throw in a listing or two of their own into the mix.

Ask Jeeves
AskJeeves is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your question. If it fails to find a match within its own database, then it will provide matching web pages from various search engines. The service went into beta in mid-April 1997 and opened fully on June 1, 1997. AskJeeves receives its main/organic Results from the Teoma search engine, but it also uses Google's sponsored results.

Ask Jeeves' search and search-based portal brands include: Ask Jeeves (Ask.com and Ask.co.uk), Ask Jeeves for Kids (AJKids.com), Excite (excite.com), iWon (iwon.com), My Search (mysearch.com), My Way (myway.com), My Web Search (mywebsearch.com), and Teoma (teoma.com).

Excite
The Excite Network is the sixth most-trafficked Web property (Nielsen//NetRatings) and includes two premier portals, iWon and Excite.

GO
Go.com is the Internet business of The Walt Disney Company, and manages some of the Internet's most popular Web sites, including the GO.com portal.

Google
Google is a search engine that makes significant use of link popularity as a primary way to rank web pages. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them.

The PageRank System works so well that Google has gained wide-spread praise for its high relevancy.

Google not only maintains its own spider-based index, it has a directory powered by the Open Directory Project that is ranked according to Google's link popularity technology.

HotBot
HotBot is a favorite among researchers due to its many powerful searching features. In most cases, HotBot's first page of results comes from the Yahoo! Search Engine Service, while sponsored results come from Google Adwords.

HotBot also receives its directory listings from the Google Directory which is the DMOZ Directory ranked using Google's PageRank System. Secondary listings are provided to HotBot by Inktomi.

Inktomi
Inktomi is not a search engine, but a searchable database. Founded in 1996 "with core search technology based on a research project at UC Berkeley that harnessed the power of parallel computing."

The Inktomi Corp. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo, and is the leading provider of OEM Web search and paid inclusion services. Inktomi doesn’t use any search engine results but its own, however, they do supply secondary results to AOL, Overture, MSN, and HotBot.

IWON
Won is the Internet's leading loyalty-based portal combining world-class search, content, and functionality with the Internet's largest guaranteed cash giveaway and loyalty program.

Looksmart

LookSmart provides partners and search users with industry-leading search results through the unique combination of proprietary search technology, a Web index and a professionally edited directory.

LookSmart's proprietary search technology, branded under the trade name of WiseNut, makes use of textual analysis of hyperlinks, Web page popularity, user feedback, and editorial input to provide search results with industry-leading relevance.

Integrating a traditional centralized crawling framework and a paradigm-shifting distributed crawling model, LookSmart has built WiseNut into one of the Web's largest Web indices, including 2.5 billion URLs and 1.1 billion indexed documents.

Lycos
Lycos still uses The Open Directory for data, but it’s been moved from their front page to a subdirectory and it doesn’t get updated very frequently. Their main directory uses a number of different resources, for example the “Health” tree, is powered by WebMD.

MSN
As stated above, MSN search engine receives its search results from a variety of sources. The "Featured Sites" section search results are provided by MSN's sponsors. The results in the "Web Directory Topics" and "Web Directory Sites" sections come from Overture, one of MSN's primary provider...

In some cases Overture does not have sufficient results, so Inktomi "Web Pages" results follow and thus your "free" indexed entries may rank well. At the top of the "Web Directory Sites" section, you can click on a link to view the 10 most popular sites provided by Direct Hit (now Teoma). The "Web Pages" section is provided by Inktomi.

Netscape
Netscape Search results come primarily from Google, receiving main or organic, sponsored and secondary listings from Google and Google’s Adwords program. Netscape also receives its directory listings from DMOZ.

Netscape uses Google Search by default, although you can search using a number of other search engines from the Netscape search bar. The sponsored section is provided by Google’s Sponsored Links.

ODP
The ODP, short for "The Open Directory Project" (also known as DMOZ) uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly known as NewHoo, it was launched in June 1998, 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... with Netscape itself being the first licensee.

Since then, AOL has acquired Netscape and thus now owes DMOZ. Many search engines have devoted their directory results to DMOZ's listings. Included in those who use the DMOZ directory for their search results are TerraLycos, AOL, AltaVista, Google, MSN, and Netscape.

Overture
Unlike other major search engines on the web, Overture sells its main listings to companies willing to pay to be placed higher in the search results on a bid for position basis. Although debatable, Overture feels this improves relevancy.

In April of 2003, Overture acquired AllTheWeb and AltaVista. Not long after, Overture was acquired by Yahoo!, which means Yahoo! now owns AllTheWeb, AltaVista, Overture and a host of other search related proverties such as Inktomi Corp. which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Yahoo and is the leading provider of OEM Web search and paid inclusion services.

Teoma
Teoma technology measures the authority as well as the popularity of web sites, and powers Ask Jeeves as well as its own search engine. Teoma was bought by Ask Jeeves and merged with DirectHit in early April 2002.

Teoma gets its sponsored results from Google Adwords. It also sends out organic search results to AskJeeves as well as Directory listings to HotBot.

Unlike many other crawlers, Teoma has no free Add URL page, however, this doesn't mean that you can't get listed. Teoma crawls the web, so if you have links pointing to your web site, you may get included naturally.

Teoma and AskJeeves Paid Inclusion is one and the same.

Webcrawler
WebCrawler is a powerful meta-search engine that searches multiple leading sites to find the results you're looking for, fast. With one single click, WebCrawler searches the best results from the combined pool of the world's leading search engines -- instead of results from only one single search engine.

WebCrawler's meta-search technology highlights the strengths of many of the Web's major search properties such as Google, Yahoo!, About, LookSmart, Overture, Teoma, FindWhat, Ask Jeeves and Inktomi, thus delivering more relevant and comprehensive results every time you search.

Take a crash course in Meta-search.

WiseNut
Like Teoma, WiseNut is a crawler-based search engine that attracted attention when it appeared on the scene in 2001. Also like Teoma, WiseNut features good relevancy. Unlike Teoma, WiseNut has a large database, making it nearly as comprehensive as Google, AllTheWeb and Inktomi.

Yahoo
Yahoo is both a human-edited directory, and a spider-based index. Google used to provide the spider-based index, but in April 2004, Yahoo stopped working with Google to use their newly developed Yahoo search program.

Today, Yahoo has over 1 million sites listed, and it supplies organic search results for many search engines, including AltaVista, AllTheWeb, MSN and HotBot. Yahoo's sponsored results still come from Overture.