The Top Internet Search Engines

By Mark Sceats

The key directories and search engines Viz Marketing recommends most websites should be submitted to is based on the premise of ‘fish where the fish are’.

There are hundreds of search engines and directories on the Web, but only a very small number are responsible for generating the great majority of traffic to websites (over 90% comes from the top search engines and directories).

The Law of Diminishing Returns means the cost and effort of submitting to other search engines and directories is generally unwarranted. The most significant ones are Yahoo!, Google and MSN which collectively account for the significant majority of search engine-generated traffic

According to figures released in April 2002 by Statmarket 36.35% of all search referrals worldwide come from Yahoo!, while Google provides 31.87% and MSN 12.73%.

Does this mean you should only focus on Yahoo, Google and MSN?

No. Whilst a variation of Pareto’s Principle (or the 80/20 rule) applies, certain other key search engines and directories should not be ignored because of the complex inter-relationships that exist (e.g. Google directory listings come from the Open Directory). Here is a useful chart showing search engine relationships.

A common myth is that there are "thousands" of search engines. You may well have seen advertisements or received spam email offering to submit your website to X (think of a number) thousand “search engines” for US$49.95 or similar.

Be warned!  There are NOT thousands of search engines.

The actual number of search engines that will result in any traffic to your website is well under 100. And as mentioned above 5 of these will drive about 95% of all the search engine traffic to your site.

So what are these thousands of sites that you see advertised as search engines you “must register with to” get traffic? They're NOT search engines at all but FFA (Free For All) link sites and a total waste of time. They are created with the sole purpose of garnering email addresses to bombard you with overwhelming amounts of unsolicited spam email. If you are tempted our advice is don't do it. You may be thinking you can avoid the spam by setting up an alternative email address (as some of these services even  suggest).

Apart from the spam issue there is a bigger problem having your website associated with FAA sites. Most of the key search engines will penalize your site and downgrade its ranking in their search results.

The key search engines and directories most website owners should initially focus on are these:

Key Search Engines:

Key Pay per Click Search Engines:

• Google AdWords - the market leader.
• Yahoo Search Marketing - previously called Overture
  
  Click here for details about PPC advertising and learn how you can use it to drive buying customers to your website

Key Directories:

Yahoo! & ODP are historically the 2 most influential search directories & worth getting into if you can. What about others? There's an abundance of real & pseudo directories on the Web - most are a waste of time! Only a handful are all recommended from a search engine marketing perspective (not all suit every site).

The submission fees are in USD and do not necessarily guarantee inclusion - just rapid review. In addition to the above there may well be industry specific directories and local or regional search engines that are also appropriate to target.

Next topic: Search engine fees

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This page last updated May 03, 2010