I’m going to look at results for the same query across each one just as a comparison. I’ll use the classic “level 4 brain cancer” query that we’ve looked at on Google various times throughout the content farm/Panda update discussion this year.

We first used this example to show where non-authoritative information was being surfaced for important health-related queries in Google, prior to the launch of the Panda update.

Ask Jeeves

Ask Jeeves was founded in 1996, and eventually became Ask.com, although it’s still Ask Jeeves in the UK. While there was always an emphasis on Q&A, this is very much the case these days. Here’s what it looks like:

The results:

Alta Vista

AltaVista was founded in 1995. Eventually it was purchased by Overture, which was taken over by Yahoo. Last year, Yahoo indicated that it would be shutting AltaVista down, but so far it is still live, delivering Yahoo results with an AltaVista logo. Here’s what it looks like:

The results:

AlltheWeb

AlltheWeb came out in 1999. It was eventually bought up by Overture, which was taken over by Yahoo. It was just earlier this year that Yahoo simply started directing it to search.yahoo.com.

Excite

Excite was founded in 1994. Ten years later it was acquired by Ask Jeeves. Now it’s owned by IAC, which also owns Ask. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

Lycos

Lycos was founded in 1994. In 2000, it merged with Terra Networks to become Terra Lycos. In 2004, Lycos was sold to Daum Communications. In 2010, it was sold to Ybrant Digital. Here’s what it looks like these days:

The results:

HotBot

HotBot was launched in 1996 by Wired Magazine, and is now owned by Lycos. Here’s what it looks like these days:

The results:

Infoseek

Infoseek was founded in 1994, and was eventually bought by The Walt Disney Company. It then was rolled into Go.com, but has been replaced by Yahoo’s search, which is interesting, considering that Yahoo’s search has been replaced by Bing. Here’s what it looks like:

The results (they simply redirect to Yahoo search results):

WebCrawler

WebCrawler is a metasearch engine. It launched in 1994, was bought by AOL in 1995, and sold to Excite in 1997. Infospace acquired it in 2001. Currently its results pull from Google, Yahoo and Bing. This was actually my go to search engine before discovering Google. That seems so long ago. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

DogPile

DogPile is similar to WebCrawler, and is also now owned by Infospace. It was launched in 1996. Here’s what it looks like today:

The results:

Mamma.com

Mamma.com, a metasearch engine, was launched in 1996. The company eventually purchased Copernic, and changed its name to Copernic Inc. In 2009, Copernic sold Mamma.com to Empresario.

There’s currently a message on the Mamma.com saying that a new version is on the way. Here’s what it currently looks like:

The Results:

The moral of the story: a lot of search engines think eHow has the best result for “level 4 brain cancer”. That includes Bing and Yahoo. Google is going with Harvard’s MGH Brain Tumor Center for its top result for the query. Blekko is going with Cancer.org. DuckDuckGo is going with medical-answers.org.

When was the last time you used any of these old school search engines? Let us know in the comments.

A note regarding the authenticity of the Yahoo document: this does indeed seem to be the real thing.  A product called myM that it mentions fell off the map a long time ago, and the scope of the "sunset" list is a little hard to swallow, but Chief Product Officer Blake Irving has threatened to fire whoever leaked it, which lends a distinct air of authenticity.

So to move on to the document itself . . . .   AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Delicious, MyBlogLog, myM, Yahoo Bookmarks, Yahoo Buzz, and Yahoo Picks are all supposed to be cut.

Then Fire Eagle, FoxyTunes, Sideline, Upcoming, Yahoo Events, and Yahoo People Search are supposed to be merged.

This signals a significant change in Yahoo’s strategy.  Streamlining on this scale may save the company lots of money, but could also harm its visibility and reputation while resulting in an unfortunate number of layoffs.

One other, completely speculative, thought: we may be witnessing Carol Bartz’s last stand as she tries to convince critics that she’s turning the company around and should be allowed to remain in charge.

Hat tip goes to Liz Gannes, who noted that MyBlogLog founder (and former Yahoo employee) Eric Marcoullier was the first person to link to the leaked document on Twitter.

Aside from the search engines allowing advertisers to cloak their URLs as a .gov website, the FTC did not identify specific offenders because “the defendants have cloaked their practices in the anonymity of the Internet.” The FTC is demanding the four search engines identify those who paid them to place the ads and to refuse to place paid ads containing active hyperlinks to .gov websites.

 “Homeowners who are down on their luck need help, not misdirection by Internet impostors,” FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said. “The Commission will continue to work with the Treasury Department to move quickly against scammers who prey upon financially distressed consumers.”

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Chairman Leibowitz, and US Attorney General Eric Holder announced last month a multi-agency crackdown on foreclosure rescue scams and loan modification fraud. The FTC advises victims of fraud of this nature to contact the FTC at 1-800-FTC-HELP. TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) related fraud complaints can be filed at www.sigtarp.gov .
 

In a “Text-Search Blanket Finish” chart, for example, PC World found that AlltheWeb actually came in first, and second place went to AltaVista.  King Google only managed to capture third (although in terms of points, Google fell just slightly behind the other two).  The interestingly named “Dial Into The Local Scene” test also didn’t finish in Google’s favor; it placed second, after Live Search for Mobile.

Still, things could have gone worse for the Mountain View-based company – PC World included all of its major competitors (Yahoo, Ask, and Microsoft Live) in the comparison, as well as some lesser-known (or less popular, as the case may be) rivals (AlltheWeb, AltaVista, Blogdigger, Picsearch, and Tubesurf).

But the final verdict certainly favored Google: “If you use Google and are happy with it, you have no reason to switch engines,” wrote Jeff Bertolucci.

The testing itself appeared to be aboveboard, and, in fact, very well designed.  It “avoided some of the incorrect assumptions and conclusions that others have fallen into, and generally offers a pretty good snapshot of the state of search today,” wrote Search Engine Land’s Chris Sherman.

As for the restrictions placed upon Boolean commands and other “tricks,” PC World pointed out that search engines are, for the sake of their least savvy users, trying to make those unnecessary.

So, somewhat bruised and bloody, Google still wins.  Long live the king.

In 2003, it was bought by Overture. Around the same time, Overture acquired AltaVista and Yahoo acquired Overture.

Yahoo used AlltheWeb and AltaVista for experimentation, eventually allowing the brands to fade to obscurity. Wednesday, Yahoo released AlltheWeb LiveSearch , a tool that automatically generates a dropdown menu showing keywords and phrases that might match the query as it is being typed.

Results are displayed as the user types the query, defaulting to the nearest match for the words as they are entered. It also offers users related queries, spelling suggestions and keyboard shortcuts that can be set by individual users.

SEOs can use LiveSearch as a keyword suggestion tool and as an indicator of other terms that might relate to targeted keyword phrases on client campaigns.

Add to | DiggThis | Yahoo! My Web

Technorati:

Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel – 250-385-1190 Toll Free – 877-385-5526 Fax – 250-385-1198

Over 90% of US search engine traffic is driven by Yahoo! or Google owned search technology – source: Search Engine Watch. Additionally Ask Jeeves owns around 5% of the traffic. You may hear the names of many other search engines, but most of them are powered by the above search engines in one way or another. For example, Yahoo! owns Inktomi, AltaVista, and AllTheWeb. All three of those search engines are powered from the same database as Yahoo! Search. A few meta search engines also drive a decent amount of traffic.

What are Meta Search Engines?

Meta search engines do not crawl the web, but combine the results of other search engines. If you are listed in the top few engines then you will also appear in meta search results. Vivisimo is an example of a meta search engine.

Search Engine Submission Software

There is no reason to purchase search engine submission software. Any search engine worth being listed in will usually list your site if you get just a few incoming links. Also people who claim to resubmit your site monthly are trying to take advantage of you. Search engines will keep your site in their index if you have a few decent inbound links.

I do not even submit sites to search engines anymore, but here are links to the only five search engine submission pages I would potentially use.

Free Search Engine Submission

I rarely submit pages to search engines since I know they will follow links and index the pages (that is what search engines do). If you want to submit your site (please note submission does not guarantee inclusion) then these are the locations where you can.

Directory Submission

Directories are human compiled search engines. They generally each have their own specific focus and taxonomy. By listing your site in a few directories you can ensure that search engines will eventually pick up your pages.

Since directories are compiled by humans they take an extremely large amount of time to maintain. Directories do not aim to list all websites, but only the best. Most websites will not fit the criteria to list in the best directories.

Major Directories

There are two directories which are generally stand above all others in distribution and importance.

Second Tier Directories

There are a ton of smaller directories on the web. Many of them require a reciprocal link to be included. If a directory requires a reciprocal link to be listed in then it is usually not worth listing in.

The cost for submission into most second tier directories is usually less than $50. In addition it is easy to become an editor for many of these second tier directories. Some of the more popular second tier directories are:

Reviewed Web Guides

Some sites have a directory type structure but are focused more on article based and have individual editors which frequently write articles covering their topics.

Web Guides are generally extremely selective in what sites they will list.

Topic Specific Directories

Many directory are built to cover niche topics. Sometimes these links are more valuable than links deep within general directories since your specific category may be only one or two links away from the home page.

Business.com is a business directory, and there are literally thousands and thousands of other topical directories. I think one time I even found a nail care directory. You can search for directories specific to your site by searching some of the top search engines for various descriptive keywords in your topic (for me some examples might be seo, marketing, search engine marketing, search engine optimization…) and adding phrases to them such as add url, submit site, resources, websites. More tips on how to find web directories.

Other Directory Resources

You can find tons of other directories looking through the following resources.

Google Directory: Directories

Other Link Ideas

There are tons of free links here and there on the web. Some good examples would be:

Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, an ebook offering the latest
search engine optimization tips and strategies. From SEOBook.com Aaron
gives away free advice and search engine optimization tools. He is a
regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and runs the
Threadwatch community.

Even more costly than the time performing SEO is the time it takes to learn how to do it correctly. Many people want to sell you things for $10 or $20 which have no intrinsic value. Most of the best SEO tools do not even cost 1 cent.

Why People Give Away SEO Tools
People like me write articles like this. Sites which have excellent free SEO tools get a ton of inbound links, link popularity, and traffic. They can leverage this position for personal gain in any way they choose. There might be a few pieces of software which are slightly better, but for the most part, these free tools are better than most SEO software for sale.

Keyword Suggestion

Best in Breed: Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool

The Digital Point Keyword Suggestion tool combines the results of WordTracker and the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool in a single simple interface.

Pluses:

Drawbacks:

Other Recommended Free Keyword Suggestion Tools:

Keyword Density Tools
On page copy can only go so far toward your search engine optimization. As long as you title and structure a page properly, do extensive keyword research, build a linking campaign, and write for the user you should do decent.

Best in Breed: Google Toolbar

The Google Toolbar allows you to highlight what terms appear on a page. From there you can eyeball the keyword density.

Pluses:

Drawbacks:

Some people may not be able to eyeball the keyword density well.

Other Recommended Keyword Density Tools

Link Analysis Tools

As search engines become more advanced they will be able to better extract information about information. Incoming links from topic related authorities is only going to become more and more important.

Best In Breed: Google Backlinks (Example backlink search.)

Google Backlink Search on competitors and then add “&num=100″ at end of address bar. It will make checking backlinks a snap.

Pluses:

Drawbacks:

Other Recommended Link Analysis Tools

Rank Checking Tools

Most time spent checking rankings would be better spent creating content or link building. If you are a compulsive rank checker this first tool is the perfect tool for you.

Best In Breed: Digital Point Keyword Ranking Tool

Pluses:

Drawbacks:

Other Recommended Rank Checking Tools

Customer Tracking Software

Best In Breed: Web Server Logs

Good web server logs and a lof file analyzer tell the whole story. They tell you where your traffic is coming from. Those terms which show up in your web server logs are the terms that you rank well for and are being searched for. If you have inadequate server logs you may want to consider trying one of the other tools listed below.

If you can not afford a lof file analyzer there still are a couple free options.

Web Server Logs

Pluses:

Drawbacks:

Other Recommended Free Tracking Software

Aaron Wall is the author of SEO Book, an ebook offering the latest
search engine optimization tips and strategies. From SEOBook.com Aaron
gives away free advice and search engine optimization tools. He is a
regular conference speaker, partner in Clientside SEM, and runs the
Threadwatch community.

Have Your People Call My People: Lunch With Yahoo!

But he caught up with me in New York and we sat down for a “little chat.”

Once we cleared the air we had an interesting half an hour of conversation ranging from blackhat seo techniques to the future of AltaVista and AllTheWeb.

In certain forums, he said, where veteran members discuss blackhat seo techniques freely, newer members use these techniques on their own sites and then get banned. I asked Tim about somehow warning webmasters that they’re using blackhat techniques, thereby protecting those who inadvertently cross the line.

He said, “we do warn them. We ban them.”

He pointed out first how difficult notifying offenders would be, given that webmasters often falsify their whois data. Secondly, he said that every blackhat technique has an arguably legitimate use, even cloaking. (Though 95% of the time he sees such techniques it’s spam.)

Also, issuing warnings would notify optimizers where the “spam lines” are, meaning that if he told BobsTravelWorld.com that they have too many links on a page, Bob would be able to bring that link count to just under the maximum amount Yahoo allows. (Not that the number of links on the page is or isn’t something Yahoo’s bot uses to flag spam – just an example Tim used.)

Tim also mentioned that alltheweb and AltaVista could soon have their own distinct algorithms and indices. The results will still be relevant, he said, but different.

This reminded me of Greg Jarboe’s “search as media” concept that rocked my world last December. The concept was obviously not new to Tim – he said Fast, one of the many search engines he’s worked on, originally started as a search engine for women.

Though he didn’t touch on timeline or any other specifics, he did make it clear that alltheweb and AltaVista will eventually have different results.

I think that’s smart, especially in light of Bob Davis’s remarks (Bob Davis sold Lycos for 12.5 billion in ’99 and now funds companies through Highland Capital) in an earlier session that the future of search is in verticals. I’m excited to see how Yahoo positions their less prominent engines, and what search products they develop around them.

To show my appreciation to Tim for chatting with me (without pr around even), today is officially my all Yahoo search day. I’ll let you know if I decide to change my homepage.

Garrett French is the editor of iEntry’s eBusiness channel. You can talk to him directly at WebProWorld, the eBusiness Community Forum.

If you want to get the most out of your search engine submission time, there are exactly eight (8) places where your site needs to be found. That’s 5 crawling search engine databases, and 3 directories. Before we get into the strategies you can use, here is the lineup:

The Crawling Search Engines:
1. Google (powers Google)
2. Inktomi (powers MSN, AOL, Hotbot, IWon… and others)
3. FAST/AllTheWeb (powers AllTheWeb.com and Lycos.com)
4. Altavista (powers Altavista)
5. Wisenut (powers Wisenut, may be feeding Teoma/Ask.com)

The Directories:
1. Yahoo!
2. Looksmart
3. Open Directory

** Crawling Search Engine Strategy #1:
Let ‘em find you Getting into all 5 major crawling search engine databases (there are no others worth your time) can be done easily – just get enough other sites to link to yours, and they’ll find you… it took less than 2 weeks for all of them to find and crawl my new site last fall.

** Crawling Search Engine Strategy #2:
Buy your way in! Altavista and Inktomi offer “paid inclusion” programs, where you pay them a fee and they keep your site’s listing up to date. It isn’t cheap. Altavista’s program costs $39 every six months for a single URL, and Inktomi’s is $39 a year for the same thing. My advice is to buy Inktomi’s service for your site’s main page, if you just can’t wait for them to find you.

Altavista Paid Inclusion:
http://www.infospider.com

Inktomi Paid Inclusion:
http://www.inktomi.com/products/search/pagesubmission.html

** Crawling Search Engine Strategy #3:
Free submission I think submitting pages to search engines is a waste of time. Most search engines actually rank your pages higher if they find them on their own, and at least one of them (Google) won’t include your pages until they find at least one link to your domain.

However, since I know you can’t resist the temptation, here are the 5 places to submit your site for free:
1. Google http://www.google.com/addurl.html
2. Inktomi http://hotbot.lycos.com/addurl.asp
3. FAST http://www.alltheweb.com/add_url.php
4. Altavista http://addurl.altavista.com/sites/addurl/newurl
5. Wisenut http://www.wisenut.com/submitsite.html

** Directories: Who Feeds Who
The Yahoo! directory is the most important – a Yahoo! listing is said to be worth the equivalent of 100 link swaps, in terms of how it affects your search engine rankings. It now costs $299 a year to get a commercial site listed… and that’s only if it’s good enough to be included – the first $299 is paid up-front, and they keep it even if they don’t list your site.

The Looksmart Directory (http://www.looksmart.com) is important “right now” because the MSN search portal (which is plugged into Internet Explorer by default) uses a combination of Looksmart results, DirectHit rankings, and Inktomi search results. If your site is not in Looksmart, you won’t rank well on MSN.

Looksmart charges a one-time fee of $299 to review your site. If MSN ever stops using Looksmart’s database, your listing won’t be worth much – Looksmart.com itself gets minimal traffic.

A non-commercial site can be submitted to Looksmart through Zeal (http://www.zeal.com), which is free, but time-consuming – you have to take a test! It’s easier to find someone who is already a “Zealot” and ask them to submit it for you.

The Open Directory (http://www.dmoz.org) is, unfortunately, the hardest to get into – because it’s run by an all-volunteer work force, there’s no telling when (or if) a submitted site will be reviewed. They ought to offer a low-cost paid submission option and give the money to their volunteer editors… but they don’t.

Open Directory results affect your rankings on Google, AOL, and just about everywhere else. It doesn’t carry quite the weight of a Yahoo! listing, but it’s close.

All 3 of the major directories have rules on submitting your site. Since Yahoo! and Looksmart both charge $299 just to look at your site, you had better make sure your site is in tip-top condition before you submit, and you had better follow all of the rules exactly.

My advice is to submit to any directory you can afford to be in. Yahoo! at $299 a year doesn’t make sense for everyone, nor does Looksmart. The Open Directory is free, so of course you’ll want to submit to them.

** Why I Never Submit To Search Engines!
As for submitting to the search engines, you know my position on this: work on getting links from other sites, and let the search engines find you… unless you’re ready to pay for inclusion.

I know you’re itching to get your site listed, and won’t believe me when I tell you it’s actually faster if you don’t submit.

Here’s a compromise: submit your home page to everyone except Google, then get to work on incoming links. If you get even 20 links set up, I’ll bet the Googlebot finds you before the other search engines get around to visiting you. Once you’ve been through this exercise, I doubt you’ll ever submit a site again.

Dan Thies is a well-known writer and teacher on search engine marketing. He offers consulting, training, and coaching for webmasters, business owners, SEO/SEM consultants, and other marketing professionals through his company, SEO Research Labs. His next online class will be a link building clinic beginning March 22

Website owners who don’t understand what these changes mean for them are missing out on tremendous opportunities to boost their site’s search engine traffic.

This little “Search Engine IQ Test” will help you find out how much of what you know about search engines is still true today.

1. Which search engine provides “web page” results for Yahoo?
A – Altavista
B – Excite
C – Google
D – FAST/AllTheWeb
E – Inktomi

2. Which of these search engines uses “theme-based indexing?”
A – Altavista
B – Hotbot
C – Google
D – FAST/AllTheWeb
E – All of the above

3. Which search engines use META tags in ranking sites?
A – Hotbot
B – MSN
C – Google
D – FAST/AllTheWeb
E – Altavista

4. Which of the following search engines uses its own database of web sites to provide its primary results?
A – MSN
B – Hotbot
C – Lycos
D – Excite
E – None of the above

5. In order to achieve top search engine rankings, you must submit your site to the major search engines:
A – Once
B – Every Day
C – Every Week
D – Every Month
E – Every Year

6. True or False: Ranking in the top ten for your favorite search phrase means you’ll get lots of traffic.
A – True
B – False

Answers
1. C Google now provides “web page” matches for Yahoo!, which accounts for a good percentage of the website referrals that come from Yahoo! These used to be provided by Inktomi.

2. E All of these major search engines now uses “themes” to rank and categorize websites. Failing to understand how themes affect ranking is one of the biggest reasons websites rank poorly, or fail to get any search engine traffic at all.

3. A While you should be aware that most search engines could care less what your META tags say, the Inktomi database that feeds Hotbot, MSN, and other search engines does consider them. This means you can’t ignore them, even though META tags have become less and less important every year.

4. E None of these search engines uses its own database of websites: MSN & Hotbot use Inktomi, Lycos gets its results from FAST, and Excite was recently sold Infospace, the owner of Dogpile. Among the so-called major search engines, only Altavista, FAST, Google, Inktomi and Northern Light still crawl the web.

5. A But this is a trick question. Most websites get found and added to the major search engine indexes within 2-6 weeks even if they are never submitted. The only proven way to get in faster is “paid inclusion,” which is available at Altavista and Inktomi.

6. B My ‘Website Promotion Central’ site has had top ten rankings for “website promotion” for over a year, but most of my referrals don’t come from that single phrase. Because of “themes,” I see hundreds of 3, 4 and 5 word search phrases in my logs – these are much more important than my primary keyword phrase.

How did you do? If you got less than half of these answers, you probably need a refresher course in search engines. Don’t feel badly, though. Thanks to “themes,” search engine optimization has gotten easier for the do-it-yourself webmaster, not harder.

I wish you success…

Dan Thies is a well-known writer and teacher on search engine marketing. He offers consulting, training, and coaching for webmasters, business owners, SEO/SEM consultants, and other marketing professionals through his company, SEO Research Labs. His next online class will be a link building clinic beginning March 22