Dealing with figures of any kind from search engines is a notoriously difficult business. Some engines more or less refuse to release data on their traffic, and how many searches they handle a day. Others will release data, but use wildly differing criteria for their reports, so making proper like-with-like comparisons can be very difficult.

Some engines have influence on the market disproportionate to their apparent size. For example, the Open Directory Project is a volunteer-run, human reviewed directory. In terms of raw searches from its own site (dmoz.org) it is only a minor player in the market; however, it currently supplies results to a number of other search engines. It is also often used by other search engines that use automated programs to gather their data as a source of "seed" sites to build their own lists from. A simple "number of searches" list would place it quite low then, whilst in reality it can be one of the most important listings a site can achieve. Their future is somewhat uncertain, as their funding ultimately comes from Netscape, part of the troubled AOl Time Warner group (more below).

Conversely, some larger portal-type sites, such as Yahoo!, attract many millions of visitors to their sites, not all of whom use the search facilities. They may be looking for one of the other services on offer, such as news, shopping or e-mail, and now even co-branded broadband Internet connections.

The task is further complicated by regional fragmentation of the search market. Some engines which are dominant in their home country, or native language region have a much lower profile out of that area, or simply do not exist.

The following is a list of the current "Top Ten" US/UK engines, in no particular order, due to the complexity of balancing "influence" against searches performed.

Google

They currently claim to have the largest index of pages available to search (over 3 billion documents), handle around 200 million searches per day, and have frequently been at the forefront of technological development, often pioneering, or at least being the first to deliver many innovations in search technology.

Alltheweb (FAST)

Possibly Google's closest competitor in many areas, certainly in terms of database size and results delivery. Less well known in the UK, although they do supply results to Lycos, who have quite a strong brand here. They are now ultimately owned by the Yahoo Group.

Yahoo!

One of the oldest, strongest and most successful brands on the Internet, Yahoo! have lost their original focus on search to become a true portal service, offering e-mail, online gaming, shopping and more in an ever-expanding portfolio. Ultimately they aim to be a "one-stop-shop", offering a complete Internet experience under one brand. Their recent purchase of Overture, following Overtures own spending spree leaves the Yahoo Group as potentially the dominant force on the Internet, if they can successfully integrate their purchases, and mount a coherent challenge to Google.

Overture (formerly GoTo)

Probably the largest Pay-Per-Click (PPC) engine in the English-speaking market, although a serious rival exists in the UK, in the form of eSpotting (Overture receives many times as much traffic, but much of it is US based). After buying AltaVista, and Alltheweb (the web search unit of FAST), they became a takeover target for Yahoo.

MSN (MicroSoft Network)

Backed by one of the largest companies in the world, MSN is also a portal type site, providing a range of services including the incredibly popular Hotmail web-based mail system. To provide for their future, MSN recently began a program that should lead to the creation of a new free crawling results database, with the "release" of their own MSNBot, and a recruitment campaign aimed at building a world-class search engine team.

Open Directory Project (ODP, found at dmoz.org)

As noted above, the Open Directory Project is a volunteer-run, human reviewed directory site. Although it is relatively small in terms of directly delivered traffic for most topics, it is an excellent source of quality information.

AOL

Run by the AOL Time Warner media conglomerate, AOL offers a range of services from dial-up access to the Internet, an AOL branded customised browser and extras such as Instant Messaging. With over 35 million more-or-less captive users, AOL handles an enormous number of searches every day.

LookSmart

Until recently, LookSmart would have been characterised as definitely an important part of the search market, as they were supplying main results to MSN, and had other strong relationships and joint ventures around the world. With their recent surprise conversion from a directory to a PPC engine, their position looks more precarious. Recent results seem to show that they remain profitable, despite shrinking turnover and market share.

Netscape

Following a series of disastrous revelations at AOL Time Warner, AOL (the owners of the Netscape brand and technology) have announced that the Netscape browser is to cease development, and cuts are to be made in all areas of the Netscape organisation. This includes the Netscape search offering, which now faces an uncertain future, as does the Open Directory Project, which relies on Netscape for its core funding.

Teoma/Ask Jeeves

You may not have heard of this search engine (Teoma) before. Teoma was acquired by Ask Jeeves in September, 2001, following great interest in Teomas advanced results sorting technology. Recently, www.ask.com (the US centred site) started providing results taking advantage of this technology. A UK version was launched in late 2002.