This page lists international search engines and catalogues as far as I use them myself, either for info-searches or to register sites.
If you are searching for search engines and catalogues in german, please click here
Highly recommended: yields listings according to relevance, paid entries are marked as such. However, recently Google-spamming ("search engine optimizing") becomes more and more common, Google's "Page rank" procedure (named, by the way, after its inventor, Larry Page) is prone to be duped by "link farms" and "affiliate networks", so the relevance of the hits is now decreasing rapidly.
Since Yahoo took over Overture, which in turn had just took over AltaVista and the search division of FAST, Google is the last search enginge yielding non-paid listings (the paid listings Google yiels are marked as such). Until 2004 Yahoo was cooperating with Google, together they reached about 75% of all internet searches. Now, with Yahoo having bought search technologies like AltaVista and Inktomi, Google is still providing about 50% of all web searches (spring 2004). The "sponsored links" provide about 3 billion USD/a with an annual growth of about 20%, according to US Bancorp Pper Jaffray (The Economist, May 1st, 2004).
Full text search engine; indexes also pictures, Word documents, also uses the Open Directory Project and discussion-group archives (7 billion contributions (c't 5, 2002). Google fused with Deja.com, for example).
About 27 million users per month (The Economist, Feb. 23rd., 2002), 200 million queries per day (c't 7 2003); 330 million pictures indexed (c't 5, 2002); about 3 billion pages indexed (11.1999); currently 10.000 advertizers (Google, March 2002).
Index refreshing every 28 days; emphasizes external links in the ranking process. Fortunately, Google only uses very moderate advertising and never tried to be a portal for everybody and everything. Spider: BackRub.
According to Nielsen netratings (http://www.nielsen-netratings.com/) Google remains the most used search engine (US data only). In June 2002 Google was used for over 20 million search hours, that's four times more than Yahoo, which occupies the 2nd place. Anyway, Google provides search results to Yahoo.
First choice in any way, very fast, paid hits "sponsored links" are, in contrast to many other search engines, clearly marked. Gradually an unpleasant development can be observed: spamming of Google with doorway domains, partially containing more then 10.000 single pages, seems to become more and more common, without any reaction by the Google operators. Google now (April 2003) offers it's advertising program "Adwords" to partners as "Google Content Based Advertising".
FAST Search (AllTheWeb, Lycos)
The index of AllTheWeb is almost as big as Google's. The Internet part was bought by Overture in February 2003.
Full text search engine; about 2.1 billion pages indexed (FAST, 07.2002).
Offers paid and free inclusion, started in August 2002 to disclose paid links.
Overture.com (formerly: goto.com)
Not recommended: mainly yields paid listings, not marked as such
Was bought by Yahoo in July 2003 for 1.6 billion $. The business model is "pay per performance", i.e. ranking can be enhanced according to amount paid. Powered by Inktomi. Worldwide more than 88.000 advertising clients (Heise online, 20.10.2003). Delivers search results to MSN (USA and Britain, contract extended until the end of 2005), Hotbot, Lycos, Fireball, Freenet, t-online (Germany) (April 2003).
Bought AltaVista and the internet part of FAST/Alltheweb.com in February 2003.
Since April 2002 Overture exclusively provides paid listings to Yahoo for three more years. In July 2002 Overture switched to "auto-bidding", meaning the user has to decide how much to bid maximally, then the bidding process is done automatically.
Used to get paid listings from Overture (until about May 2002) and search results from Inktomi (to be phased out in summer 2002). Now search results and paid listings are provided by Inktomi and by Google (spring 2004).
The same holds for Netscape Search and CompuServe Search in the US.
Euro Seek
Powered by Google
Kanoodle
Paid listings and Google results
Teoma
Owned by Ask Jeeves. According to Ask Teoma will be build into a crawler based search engine matching Google. Well, this remains to be seen.
uses Overture and Inktomi, only functions with javascript activiated
Direct Hit (Hot Bot)
DirectHit is now a part of Teoma, www.teoma.com. Search results are delivered by Inktomi.
uses results from the search engine Inktomi.
Altavista
was bought in February 2003 by Overture
full text search engine; about 150 million pages (11.1999); 45 million users (Alta Vista, March 2002);
paid links are not marked as such; emphasizes external links in the ranking process; normally takes only one or two days until indexing; uses RealNames. Spider: Scooter/1.0
Offers "express inclusion" for about 30 US$ for the first URL, 20 US$ for the following URLs.
AltaVista, one of the pioneers of the internet search was bought by Overture which in turn in 2003 was bought by Yahoo.
Results from Overture (belonging to Yahoo), LookSmart, Direct Hit; uses Inktomi for secondary results. Microsoft is currently heavily investing in an own personalizable search technology (heise online/Wall Street Journal 14.12.2003).
Microsoft is currently developing an own search engine to be integrated into the next Windows version ("Longhorn") announced for 2006.
Inktomi
Was bought by Yahoo at the end of 2002. Emphasizes external links in the ranking process; cannot be adressed directly, registration, for example, possible via http://ink.ineedhits.com.
Costs 39 USD for the first URL, but only indices this specific page, does not crawl the whole site, for every further page of the same site 25 US$ are charged. Inctomi recommends to pack all relevant keywords into the homepage, which in my opinion is an absolutely nonsensical advice for somebody trying to do real product specific web marketing.
Inktomi at least partially powers:
AOL net find; I Won; MSN.com; Hot Bot; Look Smart
Netscape
offers categories and entries of the open directory, own "Smart Browsing" database; secondary results from Google AskJeeves, LookSmart, Lycos, NetScape Search, Overture. Belongs to AOL, see there.
What-U-Seek
You have to pay US $ 24,99 to register your site and then an annual subscription rate of US $ 16,99.
Expresslookup
Cooperates with overture, uses results from the Open Directory Project
InfoTiger
Northern Light
Uses patented classification intelligence and precision relevancy ranking to deliver relevant results from a so-called "Special Collection" of over 7100 full-text publications. Enterprise clients can also search the index of more than 350 million Web pages
Anzwers
for Australia and New Zealand. URLs can no longer be added to Anzwers directly, since it is now powered by Google. Anyway, if your site is has been indexed by Google it still may not appear in anzwers, at least this is my experience. Probably still only hits for Aussies and for Kiwis are shown.
Thunderstone
Document retrieval
Go (InfoSeek)
Belongs to the Walt Disney Internet Group (http://disney.go.com/corporate/press/wdig/index.html).
Powered by Overture.
Excite
Since December 2001 Excite no longer exists. Its results are now from Overture and therefore paid listings.
FindWhat
You have to bid on key words and phrases.
Sprinks
Paid listings.
Search.com
Evidently at least partially powered by Overture
RevQuest
Evidently at least partially powered by Overture
Yahoo
Is now both a catalog and a search engine conglomerate. Bought Inktomi and meanwhile also Overture (in July 2003 for 1,6 billion $). Overture only shortly before had bought the search engines AlstaVista and Fast International. Yahoo bought the search engine Inktomi at the end of 2002, but still gets search results from Google.Since April 2002 Overture exclusively provides paid listings to Yahoo for three more years. From spring 2004 on Yahoo stopped to use Google as search engine in favour of its own search engine.
Provides results to MSN Search, Excite and others; also uses Inktomi as search engine. Non-profit sites may submit for free through the LookSmart-owned www.Zeal.com site. Commercial sites have to pay (in my opinion hefty) fees to be listed. Recently (April 2002) switch to cost-per-click pricing for small business listings
dmoz open directory project (AOL Search/Netscape Search)
"Open Source" international catalog and link list, about 1 million entries (11.1999)
NationalDirectory
http://www.nationaldirectory.com/
Catalog
WebCrawler
Results from Overture
Ask Jeeves
You pay to submit your site. Cooperates in this regard with INeedHits.com, so there should be some link with Inktomi.
FirstGov
US government portal and catalog
Lycos
Originally Lycos was a search engine, spidering the web. Now it's a directory whose listings mainly come from AllTheWeb.com with some results from the Open Directory project
The trick here is to use a meta engine which uses as little as possible search engines listing paid links, because otherwise you will not necessarily get the hits most relevant to your search.
Vivisimo
Highly recommendable. Does not use paid search engines
AltaVista; Excite; FAST (Lycos); LookSmart (MSN Search); Yahoo, Open Directory
Profusion
AltaVista; Excite; FAST (Lycos); LookSmart (MSN Search); Open Directory (AOL Search,Netscape Search);Yahoo
Paid search engine: Overture
Search.com
AltaVista; Direct Hit (HotBot); LookSmart; FAST (Lycos); Open Directory; Yahoo
Paid search engines: FindWhat, GoTo, Sprinks
qbSearch
The user can select the search engines to be queried:
AltaVista; Direct Hit (HotBot); FAST;LookSmart; Northern Light; Yahoo
Paid search engines: FindWhat, GoTo, Sprinks, ValleyAlley
Metacrawler
http://www.go2net.com/search.html
AltaVista; DirectHit; Google; LookSmart; FAST ( Lycos); Open Directory
Paid search engines: FindWhat, GoTo, Kanoodle, Sprinks
Nathan
MultiMeta
Surf fast
Planet Search
http://www.thebabiesplanet.com/serchegn.htm
Mamma
Direct Hit (via Ask Jeeves); LookSmart (MSN Search), FAST (Lycos), Yahoo
Paid search engines: ah-ha, ePilot, FindWhat, Savvy, Sprinks
Dogpile
Owned by InfoSpace. Hits are dominated by paid listings from Overture, LookSmart, Sprinks and FindWhat.com