Search Engines - A look at the main players

Yahoo!

Yahoo!! as a portal holds the undisputed numero uno spot on the internet today, boasting thousands of informative articles and entertaining features. As a search engine, however, the consensus amongst the industry is that Yahoo! needs to improve its results to stand a chance against Google. Yahoo! somehow seems to promote sites that are actively engaged in trying to manipulate their ranks whilst dimishing the longer established, more trustworthy websites. Besides that, the relevancy of the sites returned by Yahoo! in relation to the searched query is low and has also been known to return sites which contain malicious spyware and malware! A recent study conducted by McAfee revealed that Yahoo! provided the most unsafe search results in terms of returning sites containing viruses and other harmful tracking software.

Yahoo! has a contextual advertising system which displays contextual ads on web pages. The bidding rates of Yahoo! PPC are somewhat lower than that of Adwords, its Google counterpart. The Yahoo! PPC module is more popular than MSN’s adCenter but is way behind Google’s Adwords.

MSN

MSN (now LIVE search) is the search engine owned by Microsoft Corp. It is the least popular search engine amongst the three representing only a small percentage of the search market. Search results produced by MSN are thought to be inferior to those of Yahoo! and are currently a search engine a spammer’s haven. MSN has long been fighting with its search algorithm to make it better, but despite several major upgrade the search results of MSN have hardly improved. More recently, Microsoft went head-over-heels to compete with its arch rival Google, pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into it’s search program and securing high profile advertising across the web, but again to no avail.

MSN launched its very own online advertising module called MSN adCenter in May 2006. It claims to be more successful at converting clicks than similar offerings from Google and Yahoo!. Apart from offering better control over ad placement adCenter also claims better keyword suggestions, ad displays based on user profiles and increased control over advertising budgets.

Google

The biggest name in the search industry holding the maximum share in the global search market. Google has morphed from being a simple university project to a mammoth corporation and the secret to its success lies in its simplicity, commitment to its users and an ever increasing relevancy in its search results.

The search algorithm of Google is the most advanced, scientific and hardest to manipulate. Google rank sites mainly on the basis of links, considered as editorial votes, from other related sites. Ranking on Google is all about satisfying users, a site which can satisfy its users with its content usually ranks high in Google. It’s extremely difficult to manipulate ranks in Google as it uses advanced search and website analysis technology which can detect spurious marketing activities in no time.

Google’s advertising program known as AdWords (for advertisers) and AdSense (for publishers) is the most commonly used online advertising program on the internet. The set up is easy and the reports are exhaustive. Besides that, the advertising program has ample tools to help the advertiser or the publisher to optimise their ad campaigns so as to improve their performance. Google continues to grow into other search related areas with some industry commentators suggesting that Google will soon rival Microsoft as one of the biggest computer companies in the world.

Global Search Market Share on July 2007 by ComScore

• Google: 55 %
• Yahoo!: 23 %
• MSN: 12 %

UK Search Engine Share Share on April 2007 by Hitwise

• Google: 79.38 %
• Yahoo! Search: 7.72 %
• Ask.com: 4.87 %
• MSN Search: 3.75 %
• MSN + Live: 5.28 %
• Live: 1.53 %

For part 1 of this article see: Search Engines: Who's the Greatest?

Want to get to the top of the search engines? Contact us today to discuss PPC and SEO services