Which Search Engines Will Survive? by Dan Thies
With the recent bankruptcy of Excite@Home, and Altavista's
admission that their search engine database hasn't been updated
since July, it's clear that another round of consolidation is
coming upon the search engine industry.
The important question for marketers isn't necessarily which
portals will survive, but which search engines will drive their
search results.
Excite and Altavista clearly attract enough traffic to ensure
that *someone* will keep those domain names active as search
portals, but that doesn't mean that there will be an independent
Altavista or Excite database behind those results.
Is Lycos A Textbook Case? The story of the Lycos search engine
is instructive - Lycos.com is still there, but the actual search
results are provided by FAST/AllTheWeb. We simply don't know who
will be providing the results for Altavista and Excite in a year
So the big question remains: which players can afford to stay in
the game, and how does that affect our search engine positioning
plans? Time will tell - I can only offer you informed
speculation on the fate of the industry's major players.
Who's In? Google, Inktomi, FAST/AllTheWeb, and DirectHit. All of
these have significant traffic, either directly or through their
partners, and enough value in their databases to stay in
business, at least for a while. DirectHit is different, since
they don't attempt to crawl and index the web, but they have
strong partners, including MSN.
Who's Out? Altavista, Excite, and Lycos were big players at one
time, but we know the story now. Altavista and Excite are close
to death, and Lycos has already dropped their database. Northern
Light may maintain an independent database, but their traffic is
minimal.
Who's Too Small To Matter? Northern Light, Wisenut, etc. - there
are still a few minor search engines out there, and at least
some have sound business fundamentals that will keep them from
disappearing. In the big picture, though, they simply don't
command much traffic.
What Does It Mean? For starters, there will likely be only three
significant search engine databases - a year ago there were at
least seven. Interestingly, all three use "themes" to categorize
and rank websites.
As a result, a solid search engine positioning strategy should
focus on providing the three things that the three major indexes
and DirectHit reward: consistent theme; significant content; and
high-quality linking relationships.
A consistent theme means careful keyword selection and use - not
trying to make every page stand alone, but instead weaving them
together in a logical fashion.
Good content not only reinforces the theme, it also provides a
reason for visitors to stay on the site longer, which improves
DirectHit ratings.
Finally, the quantity of incoming and outgoing links will matter
less over time, while the context and quality of those links
will continue to become more important, ensuring that the major
directories will have plenty of customers for a long time.
I wish you success...
About the author:
Dan Thies has been helping his clients (and friends) promote
their websites since 1996. His latest book, "Search Engine Fast
Start," is available at http://www.cannedbooks.com
