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The new state of search
This year is a very exciting year in the business world of
search engines. Overture buys AltaVista, then it buys AllTheWeb,
then Yahoo buys Overture, then Yahoo buys Inktomi, then it
buys Overture... can you keep up with the changes?
Here's a quick chart of this year's mergers and acquisitions:
January 2, 2003:
Yahoo buys Inktomi, a leading provider of OEM web search and
paid inclusion services.
February 17, 2003:
The Spanish telecommunication company Telephonica buys the
search engine Lycos. Google buys Pyra, blog technology developers
and the largest blog community.
February 19, 2003:
Overture buys AltaVista, the oldest surviving search engine
and still a strong brand name.
February 26, 2003:
Overture buys another search engine, AllTheWeb, which offers
the second largest search database.
June 24, 2003:
The United States-based FindWhat merged with the European-based
Espotting, both providing pay per click search results to
other search engines.
July 2, 2003:
Microsoft announces the development of its own search engine
spider program.
July 15, 2003:
Yahoo buys Overture, including the assets of AltaVista and
AllTheWeb.
So there are only four major search companies left:
- Google, the most visited search engine with the
largest number of indexed web sites.
- Yahoo, which is now in control of all search services,
from algorithmic (AllTheWeb, AltaVista) to paid search (Overture)
to paid inclusion (Inktomi).
- FindWhat/Espotting. As they only offer pay per
click services, they are likely to be purchased by another
company.
- Microsoft (search.msn.com), which is currently
developing ts own search engine crawler. Industry watchers
anticipate a major purchase from Microsoft in the near future.
Possible candidates are Ask Jeeves & Teoma, FindWhat/Espotting
or LookSmart.
What does this mean to you?
The search business world is changing rapidly and you have
to keep track of the changes to make sure that your site remains
listed in all important search engines. Visitors from search
engines are an important and very targeted source of traffic.
This newsletter keeps you up-to-date on the latest changes,
mergers and acquisitions and it informs you about the latest
tips on how to improve your rankings.
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