It’s pretty safe to say that anyone who has a computer has at some point or another used a search engine. Search engines are extremely useful creatures. They have had a major impact on our society, I mean its pretty amazing that you can just go type in anything you want into a search box and get back information about it in about two seconds. Before search engines came along you pretty much had to rely on going to the library to get more information. With that being said the popularity of search has created quite a huge market. The advent of paid advertising has sprung search engines into a multi-billion dollar a year industry, thus creating some pretty stiff competition. Right now we are in the midst of a major war on the internet, with the major players being Yahoo, MSN, Google, and an upcoming strong contender in Ask. So you may ask who is winning this war right now? And why? And who will take the lead in the future? One thing is for sure the reward of being the king of the search mountain will reap billions and billions of dollars annually.



So what are these top gun search engines competing over? The answer is clicks, on the paid advertisements they present every time someone uses their search engine. If you notice when you use Google for example that at the very top of the page and on the right hand side it says sponsored sites. This is where people trying to make money online pay to advertise for their company. These prices range from nickels and dimes per click, all the way up to hundreds of dollars per click, depending on the keyword. So the main objective for a search engine is to get as many people as possible using them to search the internet. Just think about it for a second, the more searches they get, the more chance of people clicking on their paid ads, which is where they make their money. Now of course not everyone is going to click on the paid ads, only a small percentage of the searches they receive ever actually make the search engine money. However, with millions of searches a day it only takes a small percentage to really make a big monetary difference.

So who are the warlords going to battle here? And who is in the lead? The three major competitors are MSN, Google, and Yahoo, and Ask is fighting its way back into the mix of things with some pretty sweet search features.

As of right now Google is in the lead, they receive somewhere in the ballpark of 80% of all search queries on the internet. Google is estimated to gross around 3 billion dollars in 2006, all from just paid advertisement. Now you may ask why is it that Google is so far ahead? Well there are a few reasons. First, Google has the most advanced algorithm, which is the mind boggling mathematical equation that ranks and lists sites depending on the keyword. Trying to understand their algorithm is extremely complicated, Google only hires absolute geniuses to work for them. Second, is the brilliance of Google.com itself, which is their homepage.

Take a look at Google’s homepage, all you can do is type your keyword in the search box and hit search. There’s really nothing else going on it’s pretty clean cut and user friendly, with absolutely no distractions from getting people to do what they want. Which is search

Now take a look at MSN, or Yahoo’s homepage. It is just jam packed with all sorts of stuff to do from playing games to reading articles about the news. This stuff is great and all, however it does distract people from typing into the search box and inevitably clicking on a paid ad putting money in their pocket. I believe this is a major part in why Google has such a gigantic lead in the volume of searches they receive compared to the other top guns. .

So I firmly believe that in this case the giant will not be taken down. Even though you see commercials for Yahoo and Ask, you know the ones with the cheesy guy screaming Yahoooo and the monkey that Ask is featuring. The bottom line is Google has the best algorithm right now and their site doesn’t distract people from searching, which will yield many more search queries. Who knows though just as Google basically came from no where and took over the market, there may be a new kid on the block that will topple them. However as of now though they are the reigning champions.