Based upon the potentially specious assumption that searching for the word “search” on a search engine should return a list of links to other search engines, I determined what the top 10 search engines thought were the top 10 search engines. I started with Google and determined the rest of the most popular list as I went along based upon what sites came up most often.
Google:
1. Google
2. Yahoo!
3. Search.com
4. Altavista
5. Excite
6. Lycos
7. AllTheWeb
8. Metacrawler
9. Dogpile
10. Go.com
Yahoo!:
1. Google
2. Netscape
3. AOL
4. MSN
5. Search.com
6. Altavista
7. [search.ch]
8. Web Search
9. Search Hippo
10. search.nl
Search.com:
1. Google
2. Lycos
3. Altavista
4. Webcrawler
5. HotBot
6. Search.com
7. Mamma
8. AllTheWeb
9. AOL
10. Yahoo!
Lycos:
1. Search.com
2. AllTheWeb
3. MSN
4. [search.ch]
5. Google
6. AOL
7. Northern Light
8. Web Search
9. Mamma
10. Dogpile
Altavista:
1. Altavista
2. 37 Search Engines
3. Search.com
4. MSN
5. 89.com
6. METASpider
7. BotBot
8. [search.ch]
9. sear.ch
10. MegaWeb
AllTheWeb:
1. Search.com
2. AllTheWeb
3. MSN
4. [search.ch]
5. Google
6. AOL
7. Northern Light
8. search.nl
9. Web Search
10. Altavista
MSN:
1. MSN
2. AskJeeves
3. HotBot
4. Yahoo!
5. Search.com
6. LookSmart
7. Webcrawler
8. Lycos
9. Excite
10. AOL
AOL:
1. AOL
2. Search.com
3. Yahoo!
4. Altavista
5. Google
6. Excite
7. AllTheWeb
8. MSN
9. Dogpile
10. Webcrawler
Webcrawler:
1. Lycos
2. Search.com
3. Google
4. Yahoo!
5. iWon
6. Webcrawler
7. Altavista
8. Excite
9. AllTheWeb
10. Northern Light
Excite:
1. Lycos
2. Search.com
3. Google
4. Yahoo!
5. iWon
6. Webcrawler
7. Excite
8. AllTheWeb
9. Northern Light
10. HotBot
I was surprised at the variety of the results returned by the 10 sites (with the exception of Excite and Webcrawler, whose results are virtually identical). I was under the impression that the search sites had settled on two or three sets of data that were parcelled out by the likes of Inktomi.
