In the ever-evolving world of search engines, the recent bankruptcy of Excite@Home and Altavista's confession of not updating their search engine database since July, signals another wave of consolidation in the industry. The key concern for marketers is not necessarily about the survival of portals, but rather, which search engines will continue to power their search results.
Despite attracting substantial traffic, the survival of Excite and Altavista is not guaranteed. While it's likely that their domain names will remain active as search portals, it doesn't necessarily mean that an independent Altavista or Excite database will back those results.
The case of the Lycos search engine serves as a valuable lesson. While Lycos.com remains active, the actual search results are provided by FAST/AllTheWeb. It remains uncertain who will be providing the results for Altavista and Excite in the coming year.
The survival of search engines largely depends on their financial stability and how this impacts our search engine positioning strategies. While it's difficult to predict the future, we can make educated guesses about the fate of the industry's major players.
Google, Inktomi, FAST/AllTheWeb, and DirectHit are all likely to survive. They all have substantial traffic, either directly or through their partners, and their databases hold enough value to keep them in business for the foreseeable future. DirectHit stands out as it doesn't attempt to crawl and index the web, but it has strong partners, including MSN.
Altavista, Excite, and Lycos were once big players, but their future now looks bleak. Altavista and Excite are on the brink of extinction, and Lycos has already abandoned their database. Northern Light may maintain an independent database, but their traffic is minimal.
Northern Light, Wisenut, and others are minor search engines that, despite having sound business fundamentals, don't command much traffic.
The consolidation of the industry means that there will likely be only three significant search engine databases, down from seven a year ago. Interestingly, all three use "themes" to categorize and rank websites.
A robust search engine positioning strategy should focus on providing the three things that the three major indexes and DirectHit reward: consistent theme, significant content, and high-quality linking relationships.
A consistent theme involves careful keyword selection and use, weaving them together logically rather than trying to make every page stand alone. Good content not only reinforces the theme but also encourages visitors to stay on the site longer, improving DirectHit ratings.
Over time, the quantity of incoming and outgoing links will become less important, while the context and quality of those links will gain more significance. This ensures that the major directories, such as Google and Bing, will continue to have plenty of customers for a long time.
Here's to your success in navigating the changing landscape of search engines.
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