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(New Information Almost Daily)
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"Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic."
Arthur C. Clark, 1972
The Major Search EnginesThe most heavily used search engines have usage figures, provided by Nielsen (the TV ratings people). Usage figures here are for the US; the percentage of searches run on each of these search engines.Information on who powers whom is based on research by Search Engine Watch. |
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AOL Search's usage is 4.0%. AOL's main and paid listings are both powered by Google with optional results from Open Directory. | |
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Ask (formerly AskJeeves) usage is 1.9%. The idea here was to offer a question-answering service; like an online concierge. With that in ind, it was named after P.G. Wodehouse's butler character "Jeeves." |
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AT&T Worldnet gets 0.3% of searches and is powered by Google. | |
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Comcast search gets about 0.5% of all searches. | |
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Google's usage
is 62.8%, far outstripping any other search engines. Google also powers main results for AOL Search. Google is a whimsical spelling of "googol," the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. That, too, is a whimsical overstatement as the universe doesn't contain that many of anything. |
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Bing's usage is 11.2%, placing it 3rd in the US. It used to be MSN Search, and then Live Search. In 2010, it's expected to drive the results at Yahoo! | |
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My Web Search allows you to choose the source of your search results, from Google, Ask, and Yahoo. It gets 0.7% of US searches. | |
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NexTag is a comparison shopping search engine, and it gets 0.2% of US searches. | |
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Yahoo's usage is 16.2%, second only to Google.
The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Yahoo's founders insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, and uncouth." |
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Yellow Pages search gets 0.3% of all searches. | |