Google - Google recently announced having reached 6 billion items indexed. The past three months have witnessed a serious shake-up in the way Google ranks pages. This is one of those cases where knowing the recent history will help you better understand the big-picture lending insight into how to map your ranking strategies.
Overture - We have good reason to believe there will be some major announcements in the very near future from the Yahoo/Overture/Fast/AltaVista group.
Inktomi - HUGE changes expected in paid inclusion services -
Yahoo recently changed from Google results to using their own search engine. This change has also affected the Search Submit services. This following notice was recently posted at Positiontech.com
IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT INKTOMI SEARCH SUBMIT - Yahoo! has transitioned to its own search technology and will soon launch a new inclusion program. As a bonus for current Search Submit customers, Yahoo! Search is providing a free trial of Yahoo! traffic that will end on April 15th, 2004. When the new inclusion program launches, new Search Submit subscriptions will no longer be accepted. Existing Search Submit customers will have the option of maintaining their subscriptions (receiving continued traffic from partners previously in the Inktomi network) or joining the new program for ongoing distribution on Yahoo! Search and a full network of portals.
AltaVista - We believe there will be some major announcements in the very near future from the Yahoo/Overture/Fast/AltaVista group.
Fast - We believe there will be some major announcements in the very near future from the Yahoo/Overture/Fast/AltaVista group.
Lycos - No major changes for Lycos.
MSN - No major changes for MSN.
ODP - No recent changes.
Yahoo - Finally, Yahoo has flipped the big switch on the wall and opted into their own search engine while discarding the Google search results. This is a change the SE industry has been anticipating for about six months now.
No doubt, Yahoo is going to be the engine to watch for a while. In several comments by company officials during February they've touted new personalization features soon to be added to their search engine. While we've yet to learn exactly what these new features will be, it sounds like Yahoo is going to take advantage of their large database amount of user information they've been compiling to help customize search results.
At this time, the most important piece of news is that Yahoo plans to operate Yahoo! Search as a separate engine and will be asking paid inclusion customers for more money in order to be listed in that index.
