Search Engine Comparison

Some comparisons of the size and popularity of different search engines.

Factors to consider

popularity: The amount of traffic each search engine gets.

dilution: Some search engines index many more pages
than others so you get a smaller share of
the traffic.
quality: Some search engines send traffic
that converts much better than others.

Popularity

Media Metrix Oct. 99:
Yahoo
MSN
Netscape
Infoseek (combined with Go!)
Lycos
Excite
Altavista
Snap
HotBot

HotBot is more important than it's ranking indicates
because submissions to HotBot tend to show up in
other Inktomi searches such as Yahoo.
Note also than MSN and Go.com are overrated because
the rating method includes visits to parts of the
site other than the search engine.

Dilution

Search Engine Showdown
Altavista
Northern Light
FAST
Excite
Google
Inktomi (used by HotBot, Yahoo)
Go
Lycos

Quality -

I do not have current quality figures.
If you do any comparative analysis of
conversion ratios FOR THE SAME KEYWORDS
please let me know your results.