Yes in deed they do, and they are giving the giants a poke…

Google dominates the world of search taking around 60% of all searches world wide and Yahoo second with 14% and the mighty Microsoft at 4%. Google is valued at some $200 billion US and it’s growing all the time.

Why am I telling you this? Simply, I think if you are part of an online business then you need to keep up to date with who and how to get traffic to your site. It changes all the time with new ways of ranking us.

It also shows you how quickly an idea on the net can explode.

There are a few more entrprenuers out there who are doing just that. First, you need to know that the guys who started Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) did it in 1998 making it less than 10 years old. Is the Internet a place to find wealth and fortune? You Bet! 

But, the computer world is a fickle one and we may even look to each other in another 10 years and ask why on earth did we ever search on Google? Remember back a little in history and think of Alta Vista, it ruled back in 1995 or so until the big gun, Google hit the big time. By 2000 it was the one to beat and Yahoo virtually gave Google the traffic with a simple search box placed on their site. How’s that for FREE TRAFFIC?

Back to Alta Vista, these guys were the first generation search engine, it found web pages containing words you searched for. Google being second generation, used it’s brains to add ranking and linking and much more.

Next is the obvious Third generation search engine, and some are showing that they may just be able to give Google a shake up. Some ideas are to shortcuts for following up on searches. Type in a film title and you may just get a trailer pop up with local viewing times etc.

Ask for a cafe or shop and the search will automatically narrow down to your local area. Trust me, there will be a mountian of new stuff in the not to distant future as Googles competitors start to up the momentum.

As I said before, Google currenttly dominates the world of search but  this can only be said for the western world. China and Russia for example use a local search engine way more than they do Google. China alone only gives Google 17% of all searches.

Here is a list of all search engines currently competing and some that are emerging… Fast;

MSN, Yahoo, AOL, Hakia, Lexxe, Powerset, ChaCha, Mahalo, Like, Spock, Acoona, Ask, Clusty, KartOO, KooltTorch, Quintura, Yandex…

 Bear in mind though that a company such as Google will not sit around and wait to be relegated to minor status, and you can be sure that the competition will benefit us all in way of lower rates for PPC and better seacrh engines.

I would recommend in keeping up to date with all things Google, especially what may happen to algorithums. This may make or break you if you are not in the know.

Is Web 2.0 a threat to Google? Myspace, Facebook and many more to come that have their own search…You need to be part of this and marketing your products etc through these sites.

Any thoughts or anything to add please let me know. I’d love to know if anyone out there has any other inside information.

Ashley Banfield www.onlinebusinessmarketer.com