The family of search. Who’s related to who?

Date Posted - 17 Nov 2009 | Posted By - admin | Comments 0

Just like real ‘families’, search engines have relationships too.

search-relationship-chartAt the very heart of the worldwide search community lies the principal search agents – Google and Yahoo! who between them provide the bulk of all primary on-line search.

Information they harvest is supplied to various on-line search portals in the form of either organic (natural) results, paid results or both. The recipients can often provide information to others.

Add to the mix a whole load of meta-search engines (search engines that access and compile results from multiple search engines) – such as www.dogpile.com and www.metacrawler.com – and it all starts to get a bit complicated.

So who’s related to who?

Fortunately, an extremely useful schematic diagram is available from Bruce Clay, an established, US-based, online marketing company that describes in some detail the relationships between the ‘big players’ in global search along with a potted history.

Updated regularly, it provides a really good insight into how search data is propagated and shared amongst the main indexers.

Interestingly, as complex as the current chart might appear, it was a whole lot more complicated in years gone by. A neat ‘histogram’ device on the website makes it possible to wind the clock back as far as 2000 to compare the relationship charts over time.

See the Search Engine Relationship Chart®

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