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For controversy i think ALTAVISTA will wear the crown in one year !
What do you think ?
I almost spit out my coffee! lol
I think that the race for the crown will be with Google and Wisenut, although I think that it is going to take some serious power moves for them to get within close distance of Google.
A lot of us geeks within the webmaster, SEO, and tech industries can see wisenut as a great SE, but it still has to make a name for itself with the consumer and the rest of the world that is not very tech savvy......or that doesn't read the tech news every day.
They have a lot of work ahead of them
Guess that will depend on who buys it.
The horses look about the same, but I like the jockeys from Google.
#1 Yahoo - will still be king (no matter how bad you think their results are, neophytes flock to this site like moths to a light bulb)
#2 MSN - The only site that has a chance of battling with Yahoo. MSN is the fastest growing ISP and will continue to tie IE/MSN/.NET together in order to increase their online exposure.
Heh!
Yeah, I took that into account. I think MSN will overtake Y! in the coming year. I believe most of that will be accomplished by the convergence of IE and MSOffice and not-so-subtle maneuvers like reconfiguring the autosearch (which, btw, is now a regular referrer for me). So, IMO, I think it's going to be
-1- MSN
-2- Yahoo
It also depends on offline marketing...
Seth, that is a brillant one liner - i was nearly in tears
I predict that some time during the next 12 months there will be a consumer backlash against 'paid for' listings that are not clearly marked as such. Search engines will drift towards the Google and Wisenut quality results in order to retain their customers.
MSN will buy or tie-in with Wisenut (or Yahoo will drop Google and switch to Wisenut)
....errm, looking back at what I have written I suspect I may have confused 'prediction' with 'hope':)
Altavista - now you're just baiting us, Caine.
If the crown is pointy with a large letter 'D' on the front then you may be right:)
M$N is about beeing relevant to users, just like M$ is about beeing innovative and usefull. When dust settles, they will slurp GoTo just like some open oyster on the silver plate. For now they just use GoTo stats to make projections.
>neophytes flock to this site like moths to a light bulb
Nice turn of phrase Seth but there is a finite and fast diminishing supply, the true Internet newbie is a dying breed. The savvy don't ride the portal wave.
I think your right 4eyes :)
The bottom line is that most people searching are ignorant about their options, and I think that 99.9% of the ignorant searchers are going to continue using what they know (or what is best advertised).
The tech crowd that is "in the know" will switch to the most relevant engine (much like we saw google swallow AV's market share). If wisenut does succeed without a major partner, I'm afraid the majority of their traffic will come at the expense of google.
"backlash against 'paid for' listings"
This comes back to the ignorant searchers. I'm afraid tech savvy users already avoid SE's with lots of paid listings, and everyone else doesn't even realize that they exist.
If there is a backlash against paid listings I think it will come from the goverment targeting deceptive advertising.
"wireless web pages"
I think your right....but I also think that there is a large gap of "casual users" between newbies and net savvy. I guess my prediction is banking on the fact that casual users seem to be almost as bad as newbies when it comes to staying abreast of the newest & best search engines....
I do think someone will eventually take out Y!, I just don't see it happening this year...
That's the frightening part. I've watched many casual users stick with one search engine for a long time. They whine and complain each time they search, yet, they keep using it. They know of other search engines out there but they don't move an inch. The only way to get these users to switch to another engine is by setting their default browser page to it. Otherwise, by both habit and default, they will always go back.
>>and everyone else doesn't even realize that they exist.
Exactly, I believe a lot of people still use Altavista and will continue to do so. It just doesn't show up in the logs because AV is rotating it's results and using paid placements.
Major engines such as MSN, Yahoo, Google, Lycos and Altavista can show impressive reach on a European scale, simply by collecting a few percentage points in almost every country. But that obscures the fact that in each country it is usually a purely local engine that has the lion's share of that market, with the majors way down the list.
[webmasterworld.com...]
Consider the way hardware prices are falling right now. You can put a pretty beefy pc online for a little over a grand. Throw in some load sharing and for 10-15 grand, you have a significant site.
Even 6 months to a year ago, putting a search engine online was a multimillion dollar proposition. We are in an era of cheap hardware that is in some cases 20% of what it was a year ago - more powerful to boot. Sure the net economy is in the dumpster for the moment, but the cost of putting a small to mid size engine online like Teoma is a fraction of what it was a year ago. I think that fact alone can hold some surprises.
In this country (US) the legality of that is highly questionable. Google is keeping their hands clean with that, but all it would take is a little consumer activism and political pressure to bring that to public attention and possible change. A lot of the search engines are US based, and in California there's a long-arm law that covers anything that reaches comsumers in the state.
>net economy is in the dumpster for the moment
The field is narrowing down so much it's practically impossible to think of promoting a site without paying. Makes me wonder whether hurting smaller businesses will sit still for it and allow themselves to be edged out by the ones with enough to pay more to stay alive.
I believe FAST will have it sewn up outside of the US, but Google has built such impetus it's hard to see them being overtaken. I wonder what effect the Yahoo changes will have.
If I was looking at search, really hard and thinking about how people search, I might not like any of the options out there. Sure sometimes, I can get some good results, but do any of them go beyond just provided a web accessible database cued off of keywords? Not really, no.
Information management might be more along the lines of what I'm looking for. An engine that could store my data, without marketing the crap out of me later, just because I used their product. After all, when I go to a search engine, I want to find stuff, do research, and get information. Not ads, not commercialized content, and not 20 million links to Amazon and Ebay, showing the same tired logos and graphics.
The player that intrigues me most, is Wisenut. I keep looking at the wiseguides, and those are good, and the sneak a peek thing is pretty good too, because it doesn't alter content to brand the engine the way the google cache does. They don't necessarily offer anything new and different, though, just freedom from advertising, at the moment.
This is such a thought provoking question, all sorts of things have tumbled around since I started reading through all the comments in this thread. It's fascinating, to me, that we have such a selection of players in the market right now, each providing quality results: Alltheweb, Google, Teoma, Wisenut. All four are quite amazing, in their own way.
Newbies will stick with what's been shown to them on television 5 million times, or where ever their browser takes them by default (MSN/AOL, or Yahoo). Professional searchers, information junkies, and webmasters/seo's alike that market, it's tough to say.
Following on from the comment about MSN being IE's default search engine. The help section for IE says you have the option to 'Choose a Default Search Provider' for searches made from the address bar. I used to be able to switch to other SEs. However, the drop-down box in the customize section now only shows MSN! Is there any way of changing the default SE for searches made from the Address bar to Google?
Directories, MSN and Yahoo, will MSN catch up and takeover, reported by an reputable external source, by Oct. 1, 2002. mmmmmm!
