Thu_Feb__7_13:00:07_PST_2019

285 Search is generally dominated by Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Ask. In some smaller markets, some local players are important. Scandinavia has some strong local players (although I do not know their names); Russia has Rambler Media and Yandex; and China has Baidu. If you are unsure of what local engines are important just take a look at your server logs to see who is sending you traffic. Shopping Search Engines I did not cover shopping search engines extensively, but they usually operate similarly to how pay-per-click search engines work. They accept product feeds and charge you a set amount per click. Many of them collect consumer feedback on items and merchants as well. Shopping search engines have a limited distribution compared to the larger search engines, but many of them rank well in global search engines due to their site authority and heavy ad buying in programs like AdWords. The major shopping search engines are BizRate, DealTime (owns shopping.com and Epinions), Kelkoo (a European shopping search engine purchased by Yahoo!), Froogle (free inclusion, powerd by data from Google Base), Yahoo! Shopping, MSN Shopping, Price Grabber, and mySimon. Expect to see many new peer-to-peer, personal/social web recommendation sites like ThisNext to emerge. Expect significant consolidation in this market. Google has actively been promoting their Google Base product and Yahoo! bought Kelkoo toward the end of 2003. SearchEngineWatch.com has more information about shopping search engines at http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156331. Local Search Local search has the potential to be a rather large market; North America Yellow Pages bring in 16 billion dollars per year, which is larger than the search ad market. Various businesses will tell you that is not a big deal, and other businesses will tell you that it is the best thing since sliced bread. Typically, whoever is funding the report determines the outcome. Local search is still somewhat underdeveloped. Google Local allows businesses to list their local information for free and add coupons to Google Maps. Yahoo! Local allows sites to be listed for free and charges a sliding scale for premium placement based on category and location. If you have a local business, you may also want to look at some of the other local search properties such as CitySearch, SuperPages, and Switchboard.