SEO Warrior

Types of Search Engines and Web Directories

Many search engines exist on the Internet. How do you make sense out of all the offerings? The following subsections go into detail regarding several different types and groups of search engines, including primary, secondary, regional, topical, web spider (based), meta, and hybrid search engines.

First-Tier Search Engines

Google, Yahoo!, and Bing are considered first-tier, or primary, search engines, as they own most of the search engine market share in the Western parts of the world. These search engines usually scour the entire Web, and in the process create very large index databases.

For all intents and purposes (and if you reside in the Western world), primary search engines are the only ones you should really care about, as most of your visitors will have come from these search engine sources.

Second-Tier Search Engines

Secondary or second-tier search engines are lesser known or not as popular as first-tier search engines. They may provide value similar to that of the most popular search engines, but they simply cannot compete with them, or they may be new. You will obviously not be spending much of your time optimizing your sites for these types of search engines.

With Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft holding most of the search market share, there is very little incentive to optimize for any other search engine. The ROI is just not there to warrant the additional work.

Regional Search Engines

Although Google may be the top dog in North America ...