I found an interesting article off of one of my search engine newsletters from Pandia. The article was about the top five alternative search engines to consider outside of the usual search engines (Google, Yahoo, etc). I thought it might be of interest to all of you in case we ever feel like expanding our list of search engines we submit our client websites to. (I’m not sure which, if any of the smaller search engines, we may already be using on this list)

Fun fact: Top 3 Search Engines for the US Search Engine Market
     1.       Google 50 % of US Market
     2.       Yahoo! 28% of US Market
     3.       Microsoft 13% of US Market

        See below for the five best smaller search engines Pandia highlighted

  1. Ask: the largest of the small search engines. Has 5% of US market. Has been around for 10 + years.
  2. Gigablast: has a large index with advanced search options. Also provides directory searching form The Open Directory, blog search and travel search. Not considered to be very advanced with other tools and features.
  3. Factbites: a search engine that returns relevant results on whole topic area in addition to websites that match search terms. This method returns results pertaining to your topic even if the word searched for isn’t mentioned in the topic results.
  4. Exalead: a European search engine which has advanced search options and new way to provide search results. Also provides thumbnail images of web pages matching search terms and related terms or categories to search terms entered.
      Advanced search features: truncation, proximity search, stemming, phonetic search, and language field search
  5. Snap: also provides visually enhanced search results (like Exalead) and allows you to line preview sites; websites can be shown inside snap window or in a new browser

Factbites and Exalead caught my attention for two reasons: Factbites would be good to consider for our attorneys that use our SEO service. It would let us “cast a wider net” for potential leads that receive topic area results in addition to the keyword search results. As far as Exalead goes, it would be a good site to consider for any of our international clients we may have (or will have) in Europe.

If you are interested in more information about the article click on the link for the full article http://www.pandia.com/sew/277-alternative-search-engines.html