Up and Coming

after the top4, who is likely to be a contender?

[discod]

Feel free to disagree, but for most people, I believe they get a majority of their traffic from:
1. Google
2. MSN
3. AOL
4. Yahoo

My question is: Who do you think is up and coming as a major contender?

Here are a few suggestions: Teoma, Wisenust, Gigablast, Ixquick, Dogpile, Altavista, Lycos, Netscape, Alltheweb, GoGuides

I'm betting on Netscape. I think there is a strong possibilty that the AOL/Netscape/new browser connection could really change things.

Next, I've been waiting for at least 2 years for Fast/Alltheweb to catch on, but they just don't seem to do it. There time has got to come eventually, right?

So who do you think?

[ggrot]

>> Here are a few suggestions: Teoma, Wisenut, Gigablast, Ixquick, Dogpile, Altavista, Lycos, Netscape, Alltheweb, GoGuides

Dogpile, Alta, Lycos have all seen their days in the sun...i don't see much market % growth or for that matter any reason why there should be.

I don't know much about Wisenut, Gigablast, Ixquick, GoGuides unfortunately.

I can't see why AOL taking over netscape would make any difference in the netscape.com search engine. They will almost assuredly just use the browser and leave the default search page for aol users as still AOL.com. If anything, netscape traffic will get redirected to AOL.

My picks are alltheweb and teoma. They both have some very good algorithms and some decent market penetration(teoma now with AJ). Both have reason to grow. But in any case, it will take years to unseat google (ages in web time).

Actually, I think the big players wont change much until the day that Yahoo decides to drop google. I personally think that it is eventually inevitable.

[discod]

I would restate that to say:

When Google no longer has a use for Yahoo.

I somewhat agree with your picks. I've been pulling for Alltheweb for a while. I don't know much about Teoma, but I haven't been impressed with Ask or Direct Hit, leading me to be skeptical at best.

I wouldn't be surprised if Altavista made a comeback. They just need to find some good partners. I think if they could that, they would do better than trying to go at it alone as they have.

[Lisa]

Considering Yahoo has a 6%ownership in Google I think they are tied closer then you think.

[discod]

Ok, Lisa. That could be a reason Google will stay with Yahoo. Now tell me who you think is up and coming.

[IanTurner]

Definitely Ask/Teoma. From what I have seen Teroma results are pretty close to Google for relevancy. Ask is already well branded and has a loyal user base, Teoma will only increase it.

[Lisa]

discod, I have no clue what is coming next. But a monopoly company would have to push it on us. So Browser companies are good candidates. IE and Netscape. So if Netscape CAN work with AOL dumb users, then I am sure there will be plenty of buttons in the Netscape browser to make people go to Netscape.com.

So I would say Netscape, But only if AOL executives give the go ahead to use their own technology on themselves (sigh, remember Netscape Gold 3, That was the best browser I have seen them make, after that it was all MSIE).

So my vote is Netscape.

[NFFC]

Teoma, Teoma and Teoma.

[Brett_Tabke]

We've had this discussion before about where traffic comes from, and the general consensus was that it is highly localized.

Recent:
[webmasterworld.com...]

% of Traffic from Google:
[webmasterworld.com...]

What's up with Yahoo Traffic?
[webmasterworld.com...]

Yahoo: How the once mighty have fallen:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

What % of your traffic is from SE's:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Traffic surveys:
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]
[webmasterworld.com...]

MSN Traffic drop:
[webmasterworld.com...]

[brotherhood of LAN]

If you get a good keyword on Netscape, you can get great referrals from them.

Stats for ye old March, site 4 months in

1 Google 3,693 47.03%
2 Yahoo 3,040 38.72%
3 Microsoft Network 706 8.99%
4 Lycos 112 1.42%
5 Look Smart 96 1.22%
6 DirectHit 70 0.89%
7 Netscape 65 0.82%
8 Ask Jeeves 21 0.26%
9 All The Web 16 0.2%
10 AltaVista 11 0.14%
11 dmoz 4 0.05%

dissapointed with 9/10/11 I know traffic should be better from those depts, even though in fast I get pretty good SERP positioning

[dvduval]

1 Yahoo 2,118 40.83%
2 Google 1,371 26.43%
3 Microsoft Network 753 14.51%
4 AOL NetFind 300 5.78%
5 AltaVista 150 2.89%
6 Lycos 141 2.71%
7 dogpile 69 1.33%
8 Netscape 69 1.33%
9 Excite 45 0.86%
10 Look Smart 40 0.77%
11 CompuServe 29 0.55%
12 Ask Jeeves 27 0.52%
13 DirectHit 23 0.44%
14 metacrawler 19 0.36%
15 Goo 9 0.17%
16 All The Web 7 0.13%
17 GoTo 6 0.11%
18 InfoSpace 3 0.05%
19 MetaSpider 2 0.03%
20 About.com 2 0.03%

[DrCool]

As far as some dark horses that could come around over the next few months, I would probably say AskJeeves and Teoma because of their partnership. AskJeeves sends some traffic right now but I expect that to increase fairly quickly.

[papabaer]

I agree regarding Ask/Teoma, I see some very good potential.

Altavista, a comeback? I don't believe it will happen. The credibilty issue is playing... not enough relevancy. I remember when I thought AV was the bomb... now I think it has: bombed.

[rcjordan]

Wisenut is providing a small, consistent, and growing amount of traffic (non-tech serps, US). After the recent Looksmart acquisition announcement there did seem to be a small boost -probably as a result of the press. Right now, for me, WN is the dark horse coming up on the inside.

[Brad]

Near term: teoma/AJ. I cannot see further than that. I am hopeful that some of the others will succeed or that topical and/or regional/local search engines and directoies will catch on.

I was predicting the demise of AV this year but my traffic from AV has actually increased a bit so they are still showing some signs of life. Maybe they will pull out of their dive and level off.

[mahlon]

I'd like to see what will happen with Gigablast in May, also how about Vivisimo? Not much has been mentioned about them. Not to fond of Teoma or Wisenut.
;-O

[mayor]

AllTheWeb's stage is set. They have the technology. They have near-critical-mass market penetration. The right play at the right time could catapult them right into the big players' field. A re-evaluation of their pay-for-inclusion program for better price positioning is all it would take for the launch.

[john316]

I don't know why that almaden crawler is so efficient? Would IBM be indexing at these levels for no reason?

I'm still waiting for something "clever".

I also like gigablast. It just seems so efficient and a bit fun as well.

The tone of the gigablast stuff that I have read makes me think that the code will be available (maybe for a price)..if it is reasonable, there may be be quite a few players in the search industry.

[angiolo]

I hope that Gigablast will have success, but it seems not very stable yet!

I submitted several URL: some of them expired with no reason. I think that they are too small (not enough "storage space) and can not index too much sites at the moment.

[mbauser2]

Gigablast is a joke. It's one guy with no money and no support, running it off a home pipe. Anybody expecting it to have an effect on the Net is kidding themselves.

I don't think any of the B-list engines around right now are contenders. Contenders have to do one of two things:

1) Really impress the Slashdot demographic. Yahoo, Altavista, and Google all grabbed the geek attention early in their development, and benefited from it, because those geeks are the kind of people that normal people trust to make recommendations. (I call it the "Trusted Geek Effect".) The only new guy to even show up on the geek radar lately is Teoma, and it's not impressing the geeks that much.

2) Sign up with a major player (like AOL, MSN, or Yahoo) who can force-feed the new guy some traffic. (Inktomi and Looksmart, for example, live on their partnerships.) I don't see any of the new guys lining up any good partnerships lately.

Until somebody demonstrates something inarguably
beter than Google, or one of the major portals changes partners, I don't think anybody new is going to join the search engine big leagues.

[jeremy goodrich]

Gigablast may be a joke now...maybe not, but it's still, according to the author, 'pre beta'.

Who knows how good (or bad) it might be when it's in full beta, or even early alpha?

And consider this: if it's one guy, running it off of one server on a t1, imagine if somebody threw a few hundred thousand at the problem. What then?

We might see serious competition in the market, seriously quick. Everybody is looking (among the webmaster community) for another engine to rely on...Wisenut, well, everybody had high hopes.

People still get hopeful about Teoma. Perhaps, perhaps not. But the barriers of entry for jumping in are getting smaller, and smaller. Consider the cost of a few good servers, and that t1 to server your results. It wouldn't be all that difficult to get a modern day equivelent of the old infoseek, AV, or even early Google, online and showing it's stuff in less than a year.

Also consider the amount of search engine research we pour over here in our discussions...it's pretty immense. I'd be willing to bet a team of people from Webmasterworld could build something *amazing* in less than 6 months, with funding.

I guess I'm just saying that sure, it's easy to poke fun now, but these days, it does not take the 50+ (was that the figure?) million to start an SE that Google got in VC money. And who knows? The next big thing could be built in some geeks basement...it's been done before.

[Brad]

jeremy goodrich,

Well said - all of it. :)

>I'd be willing to bet a team of people from Webmasterworld could build something *amazing* in less than 6 months

Honestly, I'm surprised a SE or a directory has not already been started by a group from WmW. Or several.

[KodeKrash]

Slightly off topic --

"Considering Yahoo has a 6% ownership in Google I think they are tied closer then you think."

Do you have some legal document that states this? I would really like to see your reference.

Google is a privately owned company, Yahoo is a publically traded company. As far as I know Google is not even partially owned by Yahoo or any other company. It is funded by a few outside sources, but not owned by any of them.

A quote from Google:

"Google is a privately held company with primary financial backing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital, which together led an equity round of $25 million in June 1999. Google also has benefited from several other high-profile investors, including Stanford University, Andy Bechtolsheim (co-founder of Sun Microsystems and current vice president of engineering of the Gigabit Switching Group at Cisco Systems), and Ram Shriram, an entrepreneur who previously held senior executive positions at Netscape, Junglee and Amazon.com."