Forum Moderators: open
Webmasters appear to sit at the crossroads of this busy scene. The forums here indicate that it's a steady job keeping tabs on the many switching stations of European Web search. On the one hand, it certainly seems to be, as with the Web at large, a Google world (and Europe just lives in it ;). On the other hand, there are regional players -- especially in the paid-listing sub-category, e.g. espotting. Among portals and local search, providers either bend Google's technology to their own linguistic/national subset of the Web -- or are powered by their own or other engines, some of them Europe-grown like Fast Search and Transfer.
Outside of the paid-listings however, local players seem either scarce or not very dominant. In addition to Fast, partnerships between European portals/search providers seem to be dominated by US search companies like Inktomi and Google.
One future-oriented question that stems from this situation (at least as I understand it so far): Will it all shake out to see euro-search powered by the engines of the global big boys like Google? Or is the dominance of American engines tentative? Are distant players at all vulnerable to some opportunistic Europe-based upstart that might become better at serving non-English search?
Anyway, I'm sure some of your experiences would be telling in terms of what it's like navigating this fragmented world. If any European webmaster would like to contact me to talk about some experiences and viewpoints, it would certainly help inform the article -- and hopefully make it a better one. I'll also be on the lookout for any general discussion that may follow this or other posts.
My email should be showing in my profile, but I'll post it below too. I'm based in Paris and obviously I'm English-speaking myself. (And I'm not unaware of the irony of this forum and post being in English!) I do speak a little French, but unfortunately, I will need to conduct any interviews in English. (Apologies.) Given that, Italian, Spanish, German, French, Swiss - you name it -- if you're running a European website and have experiences that illustrate the unique nature of European Web search, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Chris Oakes
Correspondent
International Herald Tribune
chriso@well.com
You have come to the best place for information on the European Search landscape. Many members here will be able to provide you with first hand insights.
For a start I would recommend the Library [webmasterworld.com], specifically the European Search Engine Chart [webmasterworld.com].
Thanks for joining us, I'm sure you will get any feedback and help that you need.
We have quite a few members here with websites in many languages and we have had some great discussions on being a Euro webmaster and running sites with multilingual content.
Again, thanks for dropping in. I think we should be able to help you you in your quest - even more so if you post some of your findings here ;)
I think the best way to get some info is to start a couple of threads with your questions. So, ask away.
pleasure to have you here, as has been mentioned already.
1 thing which may be especially relevant is the laws in relation to different European countries, both from a webmasters point of view, and also a surfers point of view.
That aside it is a Google domainated Europe from what I am seeing, although the localised PPCs (Espotting and Overture) are rapidly gaining presence.
being based in the UK has 1 advantage, and that is that after USA we are usually very quick to be offered the same technology/services, however our European cousins often have to wait a considerable time, which must be quite frusturating.
Once again welcome.
Shak
Shak - which legal issues do you refer to that affect search engines in Europe?
Holland: used to be Ilse country dominating search.
Gradually loosing field:(check the dates of the postings)
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I'd say Ilse would have dropped to below 20% right now (own guestimate)
