European Search Engine Chart - The Discussion

[heini]

This thread discusses the European Search Engine Chart [webmasterworld.com],
provided here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

All criticism, corrections and additions are welcome!

[dvb_99]

a very good article!

[hotice_2002]

Thanks for your hard work, heini.

[hotice_2002]

Hi MUESLI, you list the following websites as Austrian search engines, but I can not find out who powers Austronaut.at, who can tell me?

google.at
Yahoo.at
msn.at
lycos.at
altavista.at
austronaut.at

[sommer]

hey, what about switzerland? :-(
#1: google.ch (adwords)
#2: search.ch (keyword targeted banners, no positions)
#3: msn.ch
#4: altavista.ch
#4: sear.ch (inktomi)

[muesli]

hotice:

austronaut:
===========
websearch local: own
websearch worldwide: altavista
directory: guide.at (own)
PPC: qualigo.de

austronaut used to be #1 SE in austria some years ago but is not used very much anymore.

[heini]

Sommer - welcome to the board!

Switzerland, Austria - lets save that for the second part. Adding more countries would make the chart less readable.
Nevertheless: Thanks for the info !

[fsiles]

Goog job,

Small change

Ya.com (Spain) Directory: Ya.com (Own) www.buscador.ya.com

Saludos

[heini]

Hi fsiles - and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Yes, you are right about Ya.com. They feature a directory, and even offer paid submission.Going to be included - thanks.

Do you think the ranking of the Spanish engines is correct? With TerraLycos bringing the most traffic, more than Google?

[Chris_D]

Hi Heini,

Awesome stuff!

I have just been doing a project, and found these you may care to add for Finland:

www3.soneraplaza.fi/haku

I'm Australian - so I could be way out - but I think it uses Inktomi?

Hope this helps - keep up the great work!

[Eric_Jarvis]

we get quite a bit of traffic from haku.fi btw

[Fischerlaender]

Heini,
indeed a great work. Just some annotations for the german market.

The market share is somewhat like:
Google 55%, Yahoo 9%, MSN 8%, Lycos 5%, T-Online 4%, Fireball 3%, Web.de 3%, Altavista 2%.
I'm not sure if Google's share is that big in other countries; but for Germany, there is Google, Google, Google and the rest.

There is one big meta search engine called metager.de with a share of about 3% which is slightly bigger than Altavista's. Metager uses Lycos/FAST and Yahoo and some smaller directories and search engines.

For Yahoo.de it is still possible to get non-commercial sites included without paying. Perhaps the 'p' behind Yahoo should be placed in brackets.

BTW: I look forward to meet a lot of you in the London pub ...

[Eric_Jarvis]

by country our traffic from SEs and directories the last three months was (translated pages only)

Germany
59% http://www.google.de/
14% http://de.dir.yahoo.com/
8% http://de.search.yahoo.com/
6% http://suche.lycos.de/
4% http://brisbane.t-online.de/
3% http://suche.web.de/
2% http://suche.fireball.de/
2% http://search.msn.de/
1% http://www.freenet.de/
1% http://www.abacho.de/

France
41% http://www.google.fr/
14% http://fr.search.yahoo.com/
11% http://fr.dir.yahoo.com/
11% http://search.ke.voila.fr/
7% http://vachercher.lycos.fr/
3% http://rechercher.nomade.tiscali.fr/
3% http://web.toile.com/
2% http://guide.voila.fr/
2% http://recherche.wanadoo.fr/
2% http://search1-2.free.fr/
1% http://fr.google.yahoo.com/
1% http://search.ke.wanadoo.fr/
1% http://www.aolrecherche.aol.fr/
1% http://fr.altavista.com/

Spain
28% http://buscar2.terra.com/
24% http://buscador.terra.es/
16% http://buscador.lycos.es/
10% http://search.msn.es/
7% http://espanol.google.yahoo.com/
7% http://usuarios.lycos.es/
3% http://search.espanol.yahoo.com/
3% http://es.search.yahoo.com/
2% http://es.dir.yahoo.com/

Netherlands
61% http://www.google.nl/
17% http://www.ilse.nl/
14% http://search.msn.nl/
5% http://zoek.lycos.nl/
3% http://zoek.vinden.nl/
1% http://zoek.planet.nl/

Portugal
55% http://planeta.clix.pt/
32% http://pesquisa.clix.pt/
6% http://pesquisa.google.pt/
3% http://www.terravista.pt/
2% http://www.aeiou.pt/
2% http://pt.altavista.com/

Denmark
39% http://www.gratis-ting.dk/
23% http://soeg.jubii.dk/
16% http://search.msn.dk/
12% http://dk.search.yahoo.com/
4% http://www.jubii.dk/
3% http://dk.dir.yahoo.com/
2% 10: http://www.linkcentral.dk/

Finland
52% http://www.kolumbus.fi/
23% http://haku.suomi24.fi/
15% http://haku.www.fi/
6% http://www.pelit.fi/
2% http://search.msn.fi/

just to add something concrete

we also get significant traffic from Belgium, Austria and Switzerland...almost all through the local Google...I need to work out why we aren't getting traffic from google.fi

[vitaplease]

Nice and concrete Eric_Jarvis,

are you saying that those Dutch data are data for pages in Dutch only?

[rtiainen]

we also get significant traffic from Belgium, Austria and Switzerland...almost all through the local Google...I need to work out why we aren't getting traffic from google.fi

Reason for missing hits from google.fi may be the fact that it does not exist.. :)

Rgds,
Sami

[rtiainen]

Heini,

just wondering - where did you got the Yahoo.fi information for your table? There is a [url]http://www.yahoo.fi[/url] web site, true, but the only thing written there is that the full operation will begin at 1999.

Apparently it didn't. There is neither search engine nor directory of any kind.

Rgds,
Sami

[heini]

OK - now we get rolling here - fantastic info, everybody!

We're getting nearer to be able to add a column for traffic shares to the chart, which would be really great.

Rtiainen - thanks for your clarifications, and welcome to WebmasterWorld!
Obviously my finnish info needs some updating ;)
So what would you put as top4 or top5 in Finland?

[rtiainen]

Rtiainen - thanks for your clarifications, and welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Thanks :)

Obviously my finnish info needs some updating ;)
So what would you put as top4 or top5 in Finland?

Sure. Below are most of the search engines in Finland. I have tried to put these in the order from most to least popular, but bear in mind that this is just my impression.

fi.soneraplaza.net/soneraplaza.fi
This is a portal of the biggest telco operator in Finland - Sonera. For searching they are using Inknomi index and their own directory.

www.fi (aka Ihmemaa)
Used to be an independent search engine, but got bought by Sonera some time ago. Nowadays running using Inktomi index. Directory is partly their own and partly the same that Sonera Plaza uses.

www.jippii.fi
A Finnish ISP, Jippii, running their own search engine for .fi tld only. Directory is their own as well.

www.msn.fi
Microsoft Network Finland. Using Inktomi and Looksmart just like any other MSN search engine.

www.suomi24.fi
Used to be Evreka Finland. Using FAST AllTheWeb index, LookSmart directory and their own directory Finnish pages.

www.elisa.net/www.kolumbus.fi
Elisa used to run their own search engine for .fi tld, but are nowadays using customized page from google.com for that.

fi.altavista.com
Localized AltaVista.

altavista.mtv3.fi
MTV3 is a Finnish TV channel. It is a part of Almamedia media company, and it provides internet access as well. They are running AltaVista search engine with their own index, using AltaVista's crawler for .fi tld.

www.netello.com
A quite new Finnish search engine, currently crawling .fi tld space. They have their own directory.

Rgds,
Sami

[Eric_Jarvis]

Vitaplease: "are you saying that those Dutch data are data for pages in Dutch only?"

the figures refer to the entire domain on which our non-English pages reside...so it's a fair bet that the majority of the Dutch language search engines are sending traffic to the Dutch pages...but I can't confirm that without digging into the logs to a depth that really isn't workable with our amount of traffic

it gets even more complicated with "global" languages like Chinese or Spanish, where the visitors are evenly spread from a wide range of countries...though we do get traffic from Aruba and Surinam, and I'd guess some of the Indonesian traffic is for the Dutch pages

[vitaplease]

Eric_Jarvis,

your numbers seem to match for the Netherlands.

Just Altavista seems to be missing, I would estimate AV should be in the 3-4 % bracket.

[Eric_Jarvis]

we get some referrals for Dutch words from altavista.com, but anything specifically from altavista.nl is under the radar...we're ranked second on altavista.nl for the main single word search we target...the site ranked first directs a lot of people to us...that may explain it

if you can't rank #1, then be so brilliant that #1 sends you all their visitors anyway :)

[Joefox]

Hello everyone,

here are some corrections regarding italian engines/directories:

Virgilio: PFI => Virgilio Presenza // PPC => not available
Arianna: PFI => Arianna for local search/FAST for international search // PPC => Not available
Supereva: PPC => Godado
MSN.it: PPC => Not available

Cheers,

JoeFox

[heini]

So I made a new revised version of the chart [webmasterworld.com], adding most of the great info provided by everybody here:
big thanks!

JoeFox - welcome to WebmasterWorld!
Right with arianna, it's a paid submission for their directory only, while virgilio offers their own PFI program but no PPC so far. And yes, Supereva is Godado's largest partner.
Ah, the dangers of copy and paste!

Still not decided I'm with Finland. With that great info from Rtiainen we suddenly know too much :)

So what do you think about Kolumbus.fi, top ranking in Eric's referrals?

[rtiainen]

So what do you think about Kolumbus.fi, top ranking in Eric's referrals?

It is the old Kolumbus search engine that does no longer exist - it was discontinued at June 2002 in favor of Google.

Rgds,
Sami

[sommer]

ok heini, i can and have to accept that ;-)

[heini]

Hey Sommer - actually Switzerland was on the original list for this chart. Just like quite a couple of other countries... ;)
A cut was inevitable.

Anyway, that is good info, you provided. It would be fantastic if you could post that into the thread on
Search engines in Switzerland [webmasterworld.com]

Sami, thanks again for your clarification!

[Eric_Jarvis]

looking closer at the logs it looks like we got plenty of search traffic from kolumbus.fi earlier this year and now only get directory/link traffic but we are getting a lot more google.com in Finnish...I now understand this...thanks rtiainen

[zeb]

I have a site in finnish that gets about 8000 visitors a month from search engines. For some reason my site is not included in Fast anymore, so I don't get any traffic from suomi24.

To me it looks like a MASSIVE google dominance in Finland! There is no google.fi, still google users here are forwarded to a finnish version of google and that is by far the most important search engine at least for me. I guess the kolumbus figures show up as part of the google.com.

Here are the percentages from my statistics:

google.com 61%
haku.www.fi 14%
search.msn.fi 9%
altavista.com 6%
haku.soneraplaza.fi 5%
fi.altavista.com 1.6%
google.yahoo.com 1,3%
search.msn.com 1,2%
google.de 0,4%

Sure, these are the stats of only one site, but I hope the figures shed some light to the whole picture.

[Tor]

Very interesting figures Zeb, though I doubt thar Google has this kind of massive market-share in the Finnish market. It gives us an indication anyhow.

[hstyri]

Regarding MSN.no (Norway) you've listed Looksmart as the directory. This seems unlikely as the pages listed are in Norwegian. (Ok, Looksmart started a Norwegian directory, but I believe that activity stopped years ago.)

I cannot find any information about submitting new sites to the MSN.no directory (now, would be a great way of running a PFI directory). There is an "about" page, but the only company it mentions is DirectHit.

[Tor]

Regarding MSN.no (Norway) you've listed Looksmart as the directory. This seems unlikely as the pages listed are in Norwegian. (Ok, Looksmart started a Norwegian directory, but I believe that activity stopped years ago.)

Looksmart is still the directory of MSN.no and it is still very much possible to get new sites listed there. The directory is being updated through some Norwegian editors based in Looksmart in the UK.