Search engines are massive corporations made up of very complex partnerships and ownerships. Some are more technology orientated and others are more commercially orientated looking for the best opportunity to sell you their ad space. As far as search engine optimisation is concerned it is a worth while factor knowing, who owns who? or who feeds who with search information.
By knowing which search engine results have their indexes provided for them you will better know which ones to target and which ones are going to provide you with more traffic.
Not so long ago there were a lot of companies all at similar levels and all owning a similar share of the market. Each had similar technology and each fought fiercely for traffic. Then some of the larger companies began a period of incorporation and suddenly the smaller companies became part of the larger ones.
The main 3 search engines used today are Yahoo!, Google and Live search.
Yahoo! – Owns AllTheWeb, Lycos and AltaVista, it also owns and uses Inktomi’s technology and database for all the search engines under it’s influence.
Google – partners with AOL, it also provides larger companies with results due to it’s cutting edge technology. ( Netscape, Ask.com and Iwon)
Live Search – does not own anybody and has used it’s own data base since 2005.
The important thing to know about all these partnerships as far as search engine optimisation is concerned is that you must target the parent companies. Worry about optimising for Google, Yahoo! and Live. If you get a good ranking with these guys you will also rank well with their children companies or the smaller companies they feed.
