Getting search engines to consistently send your site new prospects can seem like the blackest of online black arts. Part of the problem is that many search engines (including the "majors") are really serving results from other search engines. Knowing "who is serving whom" with respect to search engine results then becomes a critical marketing issue.

During the "good old days", each search engine produced its own search results. This meant you had to focus on each one separately to achieve any kind of high ranking across the board. For the most part, this is not true anymore. In fact, today you will find that most of the major search engines serve results to each other in rather byzantine ways. This can ultimately work for you (i.e. saves you and your Webmaster time and money for search engine optimization) if you understand the relationships.

Fortunately, I found a great resource that visually maps these relationships in a way that allows you to instantly see "who serves whom" in the world of search engine results. By clicking on the graphic below you will open a PDF of this map that was created by Bruce Clay, LLC; a search engine optimization (SEO) company.

(used with permission by Bruce Clay, LLC)

By clicking on any of the nodes (on the PDF) you will see a description of the respective search engine and how it relates to the others. This map also makes it immediately apparent that Overture.com is at the center of today's search engine universe (something I've been talking about for quite some time). By itself Overture.com is not that large or popular of a search engine. However, according to this relationship map, it serves top "visibility" position results to 11 other major search engines! This makes it the "Big Daddy" of them all —one not to be ignored. For example, if you click on the Overture node, you will see (as of this writing) that Overture provides search results to other search engines as follows:

ALL CONTENT: Ask Jeeves
Top 2 results: NetScape
Top 2 results*: AltaVista
Top 3 results: AOL
Top 3 results: Direct Hit
Top 4 results: HotBot
Top 5 results: Lycos
Top 7 results: IWon
Top 8 results: NBCi

This is particularly interesting because it dispels the common notion (even previously held by me!) that the top three results in Overture for a particular search term are always served to the other engines. Apparently this is just not so.

Now That I Have A Map, Where Do I Go?

There are several things you can do with this information. First, if you cannot afford to hire a true SEO expert (the good ones require hefty budgets), then you can use Overture.com to cover a great deal of high-ranking-results search engine territory with little effort and easily managed budgets. If you have a Webmaster who handles your site search engine optimization, they can use this map to avoid unnecessary (i.e. costly and time consuming) search engine submissions. That is because this resource explains how submitting to one particular search engine may automatically hand submission for several others as well.

In my conversations with Bruce Clay (of Bruce Clay, LLC), he said that this map (along with similar ones for other countries) will be periodically updated to reflect the constantly changing relationships between competing search engines. So it's a good idea to bookmark this map and check back every time you or your Webmaster reevaluates your site's search engine optimization strategy.

There is little doubt that the major search engines will continue to be a significant resource to drive new traffic to your site for the foreseeable future. Just remember you don't have to become a wizard of the black art of search engines to take full advantage of their business-generating possibilities. However, it certainly does help to have the "lay of the land", and this tool is designed to do just that —at no cost to you!

Published: June 20, 2002

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Michael J. Russer (a.k.a. Mr. Internet®) is an internationally acclaimed speaker, trainer, author, and strategic consultant to the real estate industry and small business. He is also the exclusive Internet columnist for REALTOR® Magazine, the architect of the revolutionary e-ProductivityTM system and leading voice for the use of Virtual Assistants in small business. You can subscribe to his free monthly leading-edge newsletter ePOWER NEWS by going to ePowerNews.com.