Latin American Search Engines

targeting the Spanish speaking world

[Acternaweb]

I am trying to research serval international search engines for importance/traffic. To further clarify, if I wanted to suceed in the resptective county, what engines would I want to be listed in.

Here is a small sample of countries:
ARGENTINA
BRAZIL
MEXICO

Any help would be appreciated. I found info the Europe but not for these countries.

Thanks,

[heini]

Acternaweb

Just some tidbits from the top of my head - will see if I can get you more profound help.

One of the most important engines to cover would be .... Google! Google provides results to UOL, with a 80% reach in Brazil alone.

All Latin American countries have a localized TerraLycos site.

AOL entered the market, but I believe without much success so far.

In Mexico YupiMSN is big, they are present in other spanish speaking countries too. Don't know for sure if they cover Portuguese for Brazil too.

Altavista is also present over there - don't know how big they are.

added: media metrix stats for Brazil [br.mediametrix.com]

[msgraph]

What Heini has said is correct :)

YupiMsn

Most who are in Spanish-speaking countries get defaulted to Yupimsn after logging out of hotmail.com so the branding is definitely there. Lots of people down here and elsewhere have hotmail accounts so take my word for it.

The bad part about Yupimsn is that the search results can be limited at times and this will probably turn away quite a few surfers.

Google

Like Heini said, Google powers UOL(radaruol.uol.com.br) so you definitely want to be ranked well in Google. UOL is the top service provider in Brazil and no matter what you hear, AOL and Yahoo will NEVER match their customer base. They already tried and failed.

There are a few other sites that are powered by Google as well throughout LA.

Terra Lycos

Terra offers ISP packages throughout LA because of Telefonica's wide customer base. FAST/Lycos is your key there.

[heini]

So what's the deal with UOL - using their search from www.uol.com/ar (Argentina)it gets me results drawn from AOL.com, Yahoo and Looksmart?

[msgraph]

Not too long ago, UOL Argentina partnered with Sinectis, a country-wide ISP. They are using a very poor meta search engine that, like you said, is pulling data from those sources.

As you can probably tell that site is more of a AOL-type channel portal than a search service.

You will find a similar set up with elsitio.com, which happens to be very popular, but does not offer a clean and friendly search service either.

I tell you, and I'm sure you can see, that sites really need a lesson in usability and service. It's near impossible to find anything that might be of interest to you.

I believe that the only way to get noticed there is to pick up some sort of ad package.

[heini]

Alright - so this combo, UOL-Sinctis, is present with portal and ISP service in Argentina, Colomba, Chile, Venezuela, Mexiko, Spain and Miami/Florida.

Now, how are they connected to UOL Brazil [adaruol.uol.com.br]? Same company?

>elsitio.com
Another complete Latin American world-wide portal, it appears. They don't do their own search either, but provide anyhow links to regional engines as well as to Google, Fast, Lycos etc.

[msgraph]

No, the UOL-Sinectis partnership is Argentina only. Sinectis had a good-sized customer base throughout Argentina. Instead of trying to steal or gain new customers, UOL, joined forces with them. Smart eh?

To the UOL/Brazil question, it would be like Terra joining forces with Earthlink in the US.