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Until recently, there were five major players in the search engine
world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search engine. These
top Internet search engines quickly could be narrowed down to four,
however; AOL uses the Google algorithm and will yield nearly identical
results. Further narrowing is rapidly occurring – Ask.com seems to be
stepping out of the spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in
early March 2008, Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo!
search engine. If there are just two top search engines with which to
be concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as a
whole?

What’s Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now, Microsoft
put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo! search engine in
early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at first, saying that it
undervalued its company as one of the top engines (and a provider of
other services, including email and chat as well). Microsoft did not
increase the offer at this point; it instead decided to enter a proxy
battle.

A proxy battle would involve Microsoft putting up its own board of
directors to let shareholders decide if its purchase of the Yahoo!
search engine would be acceptable or not. In essence, Microsoft has
decided that it will attempt to convince shareholders that their
interests are better served by people who will approve this acquisition
between two of the top Internet search engines. And Yahoo! shareholders
have been beaten down for some time, so it is widely expected that the
majority will in fact favor this acquisition.

Meanwhile, Yahoo!, on spurning this offer, began talking with other
companies in order to build strategic partnerships and keep itself as
one of the top engines, as it had been for so long. It was rumored that
MySpace’s parent company, News Corporation, was in talks to work with
the Yahoo! search engine, as was Google. However, these talks seem to
have fizzled, and Yahoo!’s board of directors has begun speaking
directly with Microsoft’s board. Yahoo! bought a bit of time by
delaying the election of its board, but it is believed that this is all
the shareholders will stand for at this point.

So I’m assuming that if the acquisition goes down, the Microsoft search
engine and the Yahoo! search engine will likely be using the same
algorithm, even if they remain separate sites. It just makes sense not
to spend the money to have two separate research departments,
especially when the Yahoo! search engine is widely regarded to be
superior to Microsoft’s.

Will Ask.Com Continue to Be One of the Top Internet Search Engines?

For a time, Ask.com seemed to be trying to go head to head with Google
and to position itself as one of the top Internet search engines -
period. You may remember the “algorithm” ads that it ran for a time on
television. However, recently Ask.com announced that it will instead be
tailoring itself to the niche market share of which it already has
control. In other words, they’re no longer trying to be all things to
all people in the way that other top search engines like, well, Yahoo!
and Google are.

What we know about Ask.com’s demographic is that it is largely female,
although Ask.com refutes the notion that it is focusing on “older
women.” According to an article in Forbes, an Ask.com spokesperson said
that:

…reports of the site becoming oriented towards older women are false
and were fueled by an erroneous Associated Press article that has since
been changed. Ask acknowledged that married women do compose a lot of
its core users and these matronly queries are often dictionary,
thesaurus, encyclopedia type queries – as well as categories like
health and entertainment (1)…

Seeing as Ask.com also laid off 8% of its staff at the same time that
it refocused, it seems clear that the company is no longer aiming to be
considered one of the top Internet search engines.

And this means that we are down to two search engine technologies
dominating the entire landscape: Google and a MSN/Yahoo! search engine
hybrid (Micro-hoo? Yah-soft?).

How Will This Affect Consumers?

If there truly are only two major top Internet search engines, the
industry will be like Coke vs. Pepsi. Sure there are other, smaller
players like RC Cola that some people will be brand loyal about, but
for the most part it’s either Big Guy One or Big Guy Two.

And this means that businesses that had good rankings and that were
getting good traffic from, say, Ask.com and MSN but not the Yahoo!
search engine, will be in a bind. With only two top Internet search
engines, there will be less real estate to compete for and the same
number of businesses vying for this real estate.

How Will This Affect SEO Companies?

In one sense, having only two serious engines makes the job easier for
search engine optimization companies – there’s just less algorithms to
absorb and master. However, it makes the opportunity for volatility
much more likely. Before, if the Google or Yahoo! search engine changed
its algorithm, you had three or four other engines to fall back on
while you worked to update your practices. But with only two major
players, a tweak to either the Google or MSN/Yahoo! search engine
algorithm could have much further reaching implications to individual
companies in the search space.

Who Will Compete Next?

Google has been coasting for many years as being seen as the underdog
in the industry – the cool, hip engine to use that’s not owned by the
big guys. However, search engine optimization practitioners have
started to see some cracks in that veneer. The truth of the matter is
that Microsoft is seen as a huge corporate conglomerate, with Google
starting to be seen similarly. And now Google has to answer to
shareholder, rather than just going along trying “not to be evil.”
Google has its own set of privacy issues and conflicts of interest,
such as its recent purchase of DoubleClick, which came along with a SEO
company. [See my recent article on this topic for more information.]

So when there are just two top Internet search engines, the door is
opened for competition. If another company can come along
technologically that is on par with the Google and Yahoo! search engine
algorithms and that does not have huge corporate considerations, it
could very well start gaining some market share in this space. I’ll let
you know if I see any contenders.