Sunday

Various Search Engines And Directories

Posted By: Poketors - September 29, 2013
Since years search engines are used and are served to provide various results according to the billions of queries raised by people. Even today also, search engine market has remained mostly similar like it used to be before a decade. Only change is that the algorithm used in these engines. Still the search giant Google is there followed by other search engines namely Bing, Yahoo, Ask.com and AOL, which combine for hundreds of billions of searches every month in United States. A lot of search engine companies came to market meanwhile and vanished also due to their improper focus and approach on search engine market.


We will discuss on some of the major search engines, the history and the facts :

Google : 

It was started in 1998 as a university project by Stanford University students Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Now no need for any introduction, Google is the dominant search engine used by billions of information seekers. In fact, in June of 1999 Netscape Search was updated and AOL/Netscape search began to be powered by Google bringing their search volume to approximately 3 million per day. The number was really huge at that time.
On June 26, 2000 Yahoo Selected Google to provide its organic search results which was known as Inktomi with its impressive index of more than 25 million pages. Again a huge number for that time. Now the word Google is used as a synonym with the word "search" and we very often say "Google it" instead of search it.

Bing : 

It was founded in May 2009 as an upgraded version from Microsoft's MSN Search. After the launch of Bing, Microsoft's share of the search marketplace has more than doubled. Recently the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo for Bing to power Yahoo's organic results and Bing crosses over 25 percent of search.

After merging up of Microsoft/Yahoo alliance also came the affect that Yahoo's paid search platform would be used to power both Yahoo and Bing's paid results. 

Yahoo :

It was founded in March 1994 and once upon a time Yahoo was a major leader in the search field. Before Google was introduced, Yahoo was the only popular search engine avaible over net. It declined its position by making multiple bad decisions, announcing layoffs unnecessarily and proved their moves as one of the worst business decisions in history when they turned down a takeover from Microsoft valued at $33/share. Yahoo shares turned down after that and have never been anywhere close since.
Since years until 2012, it seemed that everything was going on wrong directions. But in July 16 when the announcement came that they had appointed Marissa Mayer from Google to become CEO. This one was obviously the biggest news and might be a very good news. It made people wondering whether this effort would change of direction that the company has been waiting for.

Other Major Search Engines :

We all know that Google dominates most of the part in the world, but not everywhere. Yahoo and Bing together also found very hard to make footprints in Google's search market share on other continents, but a couple of search engines in other countries have managed to stay ahead. 

Here are the search engines :

Baidu :

Baidu is the major player in China with more than three of every four searches conducted on their engine. Baidu uses a hybrid approach wherein they have pay for performance (P4P) results. P4P is basically an approach where users bid to have their websites place at the top of what would appear to be the organic results.

Along with search, Baidu offers PPC which, similar to AdWords, is displayed at the top or right of the standard results. But looking at the interface one can say that the existence of the PPC-like results further confuses the users clicking on the standard results area into believing they are organically generated.

Some investors consider Baidu to be overvalued as a stock, their earnings are consistently high. Understanding Baidu to market into China is not an easy but if used properly can be useful for business.

Yandex :

Yandex is the best and most popular of all Russian-language search engines with significant market in Russia.  On October 1, 2012, Yandex launched their own browser and mobile app to keep their position secure against competitor Google in Russia. Yandex's advantage in Russian seems to be based on an algorithm that performs better and used unique syntax and integrating that into the results the user is likely looking for ; like the search string a question or simply keyword entry.


Directories

Directories are very useful and very interesting topic. It creates an repository which proves billions of links into it and resulting page rankings.

Yahoo Directory :

The Yahoo Directory was started in 1994 under the name "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" which is laten on named as Yahoo. It used tobe a directory with search functionality. The unique part was that there was no such SEO practice was carried out at that time.

Later on it was found that Yahoo tried releasing a web portal and in 2000 even signed a deal with Google that would see Google power Yahoo's search functionality. Their focus at the time was to acquire users through acquisitions such as GeoCities which was later on discontinued.

BOTW :

Best Of The Web is one of the most favourites of the general directories. They allow for a permanent listing. It was founded in 1994 as a listing of the best of the web. In 1998, the site seemed down to the market trends and when purchased in 2002, it is known as general web directory.


BOTW is a human edited directory. They will decline your listing if they don't like the site. A submission is $150 annually or $300 for a permanent listing.

DMOZ :

DMOZ needs no introduction as this is one of the best directories over net. DMOZ was founded in June 1998 as Gnuhoo. Later on Netscape purchased it in October of the same year and discovered as Open Directory Project. In 2000, it finally surpassed the Yahoo Directory in number of URLs in it's index and currently sits at about 5.2 million.

Business.com :

Business.com was founded in 1999 as a search engine for business and corporations categories. Unfortunately they were about to bankruptcy during the dot-com bubble bursting. Later on,  after doing major layoffs and restructuring of the organization they started making profit in the year 2003.
Link building is a better strategy which would be useful to get maximum output from the directories. We would suggest you to save this page and submit to a few and as you're building more links using different strategies.  Starting with 1 or 2 directory submissions would give you better result. Find below some free and paid directory listings :
  • Jayde – Submission is free.
  • 01 Web Directory – Free submission option or $49 one-time.
  • JoeAnt – $39.99 one-time fee.
  • Ezilon – $69 annual fee of $199 permanent.
  • Alive – $75 annual fee or $225 permanent.
  • Aviva – $50 annually or $150 permanent.
  • SunStream – $29 annually or $49 permanent.
  • Wow Directory – $43 for a permanent listing.'
  • GoGuides – $69 one time.
General Directory Tips :

Top 4 common and universally applicable directory tips are as follows :
  • If a directory list you automatically then it's not an editorial link and either doesn't carry weight. It should be avoided.
  • If it requires link back when a paid is available then it should be avoided.
  • If a directory with a PageRank of 3 or less carries no weight. You should always look at PageRank 3 directories in the case of niche directories. And don't even consider anything less than a PageRank 4.
  • If a directory does make sense that this link should have weight for your site then you can be pretty much sure that it would be an useful link.
There are a lot of great niche directories. Try to put them all on a list and add to 1 or 2 each month while at the same time you have an updated site for Google. You should have good content liked by directory editors, bloggers and most the educated readers.

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