Current State of Who Powers Who in Search

Before I write anything, let me preface this post by saying that this information will probably change not too long after it is written. I am referring to who powers who in the realm of search engines. There are currently four major search engines – Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask (formerly Ask Jeeves). While many other search engines and meta crawlers exist, most of them are powered by one of these “major” engines. Here is a quick rundown of who powers who.

• Google also provides search results for AOL and Netscape
• Yahoo also provides search results for All The Web, Alta Vista and Go.com
• MSN also provides search results for A9, HotBot and Lycos
• Ask also provides search results for Excite and iWon.com

Then there are the various metacrawlers that use one or more of the main engines results – Dogpile, MetaCrawler and WebCrawler.

Are there any other search engines that are not powered by the four major ones? Absolutely! There is Exalead, Gigablast and WiseNut. While these are not as popular and well used as the four major ones, they do have good stand-alone search technology.

Well, that’s the current state of “who powers who” at least as of today. What will the search landscape look like tomorrow? That’s part of what makes this industry so exciting to work in.