Knowing the Engines

About Us

Australian search engines can bring in good traffic to a site today. Statistics reveal that search engines are the most popular tool that people use for seeking products and services on the web. User surveys show that 93% people worldwide use search engines to access websites and 85% of the qualified and devoted Internet traffic is driven through search engines. In Australia itself, out of the total population of 19.54 million Australians, 10.63 million Australians use the Internet for seeking information. In general, Australia is considered to be one of the most web savvy countries in the world.

Search engines can be classified into the commonly used, less frequently used and engines that serve specific audience. Now, some inexperienced search engines advertisers may think that they only need to choose which engines they want to be on and simply submit their site, which in turn will feed the site to the appropriate database of search results. In fact, since so many webmasters are doing that and only a selected number of results can be shown on the first, second and third pages, ranking high requires a lot more than submission (or adjusting meta tags, for that matter). Another option to achieve top rankings would be to pay the search engines or an advertising mediator for “featured’ or “paid” listings. More about the difference between paid and organic search results as well as search engine optimisation here.

Besides choosing the right engine, it is crucial to have the website advertised prominently in the search engine. This is important, as over 75% audience never go past the first page of results displayed and 93% don’t go past the first 2 pages.

We have composed a concise description of search engines that have got users in Australia. To help you understand search for the right search engines easier, we list for you the various engines that enjoy different levels of popularity in the Australian search engine arena.

Major Search Engines

Google Australia

URL:http://www.google.com.au

Google is highly favored because of the relevancy of its search results and reputable brand name. Google went live in Australia in 2002 and today it is well ahead of its competition. It enjoys a market share of 65% and is the best provider of free search results across the world. The indigenous search facility on Australian sites has helped boost traffic owing to the popularity of the engine. Google provides easy access to over 8 billion web pages in an easy and quick manner. The Hitwise Internet research organization shows that Google Australia gives good results too. It is reported to have 13 per cent of the hits on all Australian websites. This is double the market share of eBay (5.47 per cent) and five times greater than Yahoo (2.46 per cent) and ninemsn, (2.26 per cent).

The features of Google Australia include:

• Google has an easy to use interface. With clearly separated organic or “main” search results from sponsored results and an overall clean and white look & feel, colorful logo and simple navigation. Google is still keeping it simple.
• Various interesting features include the Google image search, Groups (i.e., newsgroup) search, News search and Froogle product search.
• Other features include travel information, weather information, web page translation into English, stock quotes, built-in calculator, mathematical functions, definitions, spell checker, searches by number and the developing local search (like what Australian Yahoo! and Sensis are claiming to do well).

Internationally, Google is quite a monstrous user magnet with 200,000 Million visitors a day and over 1 billion searches a day (Dec, 2005). Google is still considered the best and most popular search engine worldwide.

Yahoo! Australia

URL:http://au.search.yahoo.com/

This enjoys high popularity and a market share of 16% in Australia. Yahoo Australia provides search results of Australia, New Zealand or the entire web. This engine displays a short paragraph on each site with the site address. It also allows users to view more pages from the same site. Yahoo Australia allows users to conduct local searches also. Yahoo directories work as an hierarchical subject index, allowing you to drill down from the general to the specific. Yahoo is an attempt to organize and catalogue the Web.

Its features include:

• It has distinct categories that allow users to search the web, directories, images, news and conduct local searches also.
• Results are displayed as search results, Overture pay per click and Yahoo directory results. The first three results are normally sponsor results provided by Overture Australia's "Pay Per Click" service. To be included here, advertisers need to be listed with Overture Australia, and be in the top 3 bidders for that term.
• Other results are provided by Yahoo's own database and users can pay to be included here. Yahoo also collects web sites from the Internet.
• It empowers the search for Anzwers search engine and OptusNet Search also.
• Anzwers provides a directory sponsored by Yahoo and OptusNet allows users to search keywords in OptusNet, all of Australia or the entire web.

NineMSN search

URL:http://search.ninemsn.com.au/

This engine is the first version of MSN search developed by Microsoft. It is the third most popular search engine in Australia and enjoys a market share of 9%. This is a part of the global plan by Microsoft against web search giants such as Google and Yahoo. In Australia, NineMSN has entered into partnership with the engine Looksmart, which provides the results.

Its features include:

• It classifies results into the categories of Looksmart directory listings, Inktomi paid inclusions and Looksmart Looklistings. To be included in the NineMSN search results, advertisers normally need to pay to be included in Looksmart.
• The top three results are usually sponsored results, which are expensive and often outside the reach of small businesses. Underneath the sponsored listings are web directory sites which are sites that have paid to be included in Looksmart directory.
• Its functionality is classified into the distinct categories of web, news movies, TV guide, shopping and encyclopedia.
• NineMSN answers natural questions and solves mathematical equations. It also features a "search builder" to customize search.

Sensis

URL:http://www.sensis.com.au/

This widely popular engine is a wholly owned subsidiary of Telstra. It has obtained assets from Looksmart to assist Sensis towards being Australia’s own local search engine. It has also obtained the Australian search engine, goeureka.com.

Its features include:

• While a worldwide search can be conducted, the default is set to search Australian sites specifically. Users can also search in Australia by location.
• Sensis operates both the White and Yellow Pages directories, as well as online services such as CitySearch and Whereis.
• It has the largest and most up-to-date navigable mapping content in Australia with its Whereis digital mapping content and the acquisition of Universal Publishers, the owner of UBD and Gregory's street directories. Whereis delivers over 18 million digital maps online every month.
• The White pages are headed to being a communication-messaging site with plans on web mail and profile search. It is planning to introduce communication services like instant messaging, web mail and SMS to generate user profiles.
• Growth strategy includes the development of online, voice and wireless multi-media search solutions tailored for the local market.

Altavista Australia

URL:http://au.altavista.com/

This fast and powerful search engine has features for complex searches also. It works similar to Yahoo and results are displayed with the first few lines of the relevant document. This Yahoo owned engine still attracts high traffic.

Its features include:

• Initially an excellent search engine, AltaVista is slowly losing prominence as now it charges money to be listed.
• The top 3 results are normally sponsored results, from Overture Australia.
• The remaining results are from Altavista’s own database. To be included there, advertisers need to pay or go through the free submission process.
• It has a large database and the search engine searches both the Web and Usenet.
• Tools for search, translation and customization are available. It has powerful tools for search refining.
• Users can also visit specialized zones or channels in areas like finance, travel, news.

Web Wombat

URL:http://www.webwombat.com.au/

This Australian based independently-working search engine enjoys good popularity though not as large as Google and Yahoo. While it displays good results, relevancy is comparatively inferior. Established in 1994, it concentrates on content from Australia and New Zealand only. The organization works across a range of different areas including search engines, portal services and affiliate programs.

Its features include:

• It can deliver search engine facilities over a local area network and databases in an Intranet.
• Its database is bigger than many human-edited directory search engines but smaller than the leading search engines.
• Its business model is more of a portal than a stand-along search engine. This can impede the quality of navigation experience for the user. For example, on search results page, the sponsored (paid) links on the right are irrelevant to search results.
• It is gradually developing its government and education specific search results. www.govsearch.com.au and www.edusearch.com.au rely on Web Wombat technology to search through .gov.au and .edu.au sites.
• Initially free, it has now become a paid engine.

Dmoz Australia

URL:http://dmoz.org/Regional/Oceania/Australia/

This is more of a directory than a search engine and is owned by Netscape. It is volunteer run and is also known as the Open Directory Project. This human edited directory lists submitted web sites by category. Each category has a volunteer editor that accepts sites for their category. This engine is key to a free link from a high PR page.

Its features include:

• Dmoz powers the directories of Google, Netscape search, AOL search, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit etc. Listings here can improve chances of listing in major searches.
• It has a medium sized database of approximately 36,000 sites which is not as large as those of crawler-based engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Sensis.
• While it is absolutely free to submit in this directory, not all sites get listed. It can take over a month to get a website listed here. It is also important to submit in the right category.
• Dmoz aims to provide quality, not just quantity. Search results are often relevant with good usability, content and functionality. Much spam is cut off.

Zeal

URL:http://www.zeal.com

This site is the result by a community of Australian and International enthusiasts and editors building the world's most widely used Web directory. This is a volunteer-run directory belonging to the Looksmart search family. This is the second best directory after Dmoz and works in a similar fashion. As typical to human-edited directories, it has a small database and the results returned are comparatively fewer. Besides, even though it is Australia-specific, search results are often displayed from all over the world.

Its features include:

• It is one of the most webmaster friendly search engines.
• Only sites authorized to be included in the database and have passed the guidelines are displayed.
• Their commitment especially deserves recognition during a year when most other search engine developments aimed at webmasters involved fee-based programs.
• It knows better about community then its competitors. It does not only judge whether a person is qualified to become a contributor, it helps users learn and become qualified.
• Listing may take 2 weeks to several months
• Recently, due to a shuffle in its alliance with partners, the value of Zeal has reduced considerably.

Oz Network

This premier Australian online information and entertainment network began as Ozsearch Internet Guide in 1998. This also offers a human edited directory of sites and thus has a small database that gives limited results. Today it has emerged as one of the fastest growing web directory of categorized Australian content.

URL:http://search.oznetwork.com.au

Its features include:

• OzNetwork web sites offer Australian-focussed services and content across a broad range of categories including news, business, weather, real estate, media, email, dating and horoscopes.
• Content is reviewed by editors to ensure high quality and integrity. Products and services are filtered for speed, accuracy, ease of use, entertainment, consistency and relevance, to ensure a dynamic network of web sites.
• OzNetwork’s search directory, OzSearch, is the essential Internet guide for Australians, containing over 45,000 listings across 3,000 categories. .
• To provide best content it partners with seek.com, realestate.com.au, soulmates world, moreover, weblink, bureau of meteorology and itouch international.

Mooter

URL:http://www.mooter.com.au

Mooter Search claims to be different from other engines, as it offers a more intelligent and humanized approach for finding information. The company is currently searching for additional funding.

Its features include:

• In its implementation of "artificial intelligence", the Mooter search engine groups together information in logical clusters, which is designed to save time.
• It displays results in a visual cluster and users can opt for subclusters in the given topics.
• It includes paid listings service with its engine. This service is designed to anticipate advertiser needs for more "discriminating traffic".
• Mooter received a federal government research and development grant, as well as an AusIndustry Commercializing Emerging Technologies grant to assist it in commercializing its technology.

Looksmart

URL:http://www.looksmart.com

LookSmart is the global leader in Web directories and the backbone of search on the Australian Web. It is a searchable and category-based web directory. It was founded in Melbourne in 1996. Its Australian operations are now acquired by Sensis. Early in 2004, the Australian portal NineMSN also dumped Looksmart as their major search partner.

Its features include:

• While the engine says that the strength is in the search results, it often shows more bias towards US results.
• LookSmart is careful about submitting sites to the directory. Most submissions should be formatted correctly, which ensures high standards of its commercial and noncommercial listings.
• While it offers some of the best search tools in the market, this engine is on a quick exit of the local search market following its sale to Sensis.
• LookSmart has become more comprehensive after purchasing the Zeal directory and merging its noncommercial listings with LookSmart's own listings.
• It gives selective high quality links.

Search66

URL:http://www.search66.com

Search66 is Australia's meta (or parallel) search engine that uses innovative technology that improves on existing meta search engines. It was released over 2 years ago. It allows users to search multiple search engines simultaneously. This helps to save time and get more comprehensive results.

Its features include:

• Search can be targeted based on a country region or by domain name.
• Users are allowed to view aggregated results from AOL Search (Australia filtered), Open Directory (Australia filtered), Entireweb (Australia filtered), ninemsn, Rolist (Australia filtered) and SearchHippo (Australia filtered).
• While some searches return good results, often results may seem irrelevant or of lacking quality.

WotBox Australia

URL:http://www.wotbox.com.au

London-based Wotbox is a new search engine that works independently of other search engines. In development since October 2002, it went live in July 2003. In 2004 Wotbox introduced eight localized search engines with country-specific search sites for Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, and the U.S. The sites allow users to search in their native language and to limit search results to the search site country.

Its features include:

• This engine is all set to become a market and technological leader with its new and innovative suite of features.
• A new low-priced paid inclusion program has been launched for its ten localized search engines that makes pages available for crawling immediately upon submission. These low prices are especially introduced to attract small vendors.
• It focuses development on advanced geo-targeting technology for search. The company displays a flag of the country of origin next to each result on its search pages and allows users to search only in their chosen country.
• It claims that more localized search sites will be available soon. The company relies solely on its own crawlers to populate its results and offers one of the most fully featured search engines on the web.
• The size of the index has intentionally been kept at only 10 million selected priority pages, for greater flexibility for development and testing and giving better quality results.

Howzat

URL:http://www.howzat.com.au

This search engine is the latest development from Info-Link Australian Internet Directories. It claims to be the first Australian Search Engine that delivers 100% Australian search results fast with complete accuracy.

Its features include:

• It showcases the unique red back spider that indexes websites and can also detect IP delivery, cloaking, tiny text and hidden text.
• Sites are indexed based on relevance and importance of keyword density in the Title, Description, Keywords and Body Content.

WebSearch

URL:http://www.websearch.com.au

WebSearch is portrayed as ‘The place to find Aussie content.’ While it displays Australian sites in its results, the database here is also very small and limited. This engine was first made available on March 25th 1994 to the users of an Internet Service Provider then owned by the author of WebSearch.com.au. It began as a relatively closed group of users to become a leading Australian search engine.

Its features include:

• It accounts for a substantial percentage of Australian and Global internet web search traffic and has a loyal user base.
• It offers a 100% guarantee to provide exclusively Australian web sites in its search results. Only sites in the .AU domain name space are crawled, indexed and provided in the search results.
• It provides fast and accurate search results from around 26.5 million web site pages. It claims to be better than its competitors such as WebWombat's 14.9 million web pages and Altavista's 17.5 million, and Yahoo's 5.5 million (as of Dec 2003).
• Advertisers can choose sponsor listing or text box advertising for premium exposure to the site’s userbase.
• A Global index staring with a trial 100 million or more URL's is underway to prove and test what will become Version 4.0 of WebSearch.

Excite Australia

URL:http://www.excite.com.au

This was formerly known as At Home Network Australia (ATHM) and is now known as OptusNet. It is in some sort of trouble but still works. This engine was formed in June 1999 through the joint venture of Excite @Home and Australian integrated communications company Cable & Wireless Optus.

Its features include:

• This search engine is powered by Yahoo! Australia & NZ.
• It has launched excite travel which is a new co-branded channel, operated in conjunction with an Australian Internet travel company.
• Other travel tools include a new and improved currency converter, information on time zones across the world and weather data.
• Excite Australia has also signed a sponsorship agreement with Cinerent OpenAir Cinema, a harborside event that attracts thousands of people every summer.

AOL Australia

URL:http://www.aol.com.au

AOL Australia is an Internet online service designed specifically for Australians. The AOL service was launched in Australia in October 1998. AOL is the world's most popular Internet service with over 35 million members around the world. The organization is a joint venture between America Online Inc., AAPT Limited and Seven Network Limited. Each partner holds a one third share in the joint venture. It reflects the unique identity and personality of the country and its people.

Its features include:

• Search on AOL Australia is powered by Google Australia. The main page also provides a search via Sensis.
• Search services include email finder, encyclopedia, kids search, maps and weather.
• It also has advanced search and category listing.
• It provides access to web, content channels, chat, messaging, email and parental controls.

OptusNet Search

URL:http://www.optusnet.com.au

OptusNet search is Australia's second largest telco and was initially known as Excite Australia. Recently Optus has announced a partnership between its new cable Internet service, Excite@Home, and Internet portal, ninemsn. This will enable Optus@Home subscribers to view ninemsn content over high-speed broadband cable.

Its features include:

• This search engine is powered by Yahoo! Australia & NZ under an agreement. This agreement ended its three-year relationship with Sensis/Looksmart.
• It offers loads of content in a well laid out manner
• Following the partnership Ninemsn will provide Optus@Home with access to Web content and video clips from Channel Nine programs.
• This search engine gets good hits and the company claims that each month there are approximately four million search requests from users.

Geographic specific

Tasmania Online

URL:http://www.tas.gov.au

A State Library of Tasmania listing of all Tasmanian web sites. This site provides a comprehensive listing of Tasmanian Government, business and community web sites. It offers a subject guide also. Users can choose to search through alphabetical listing too. While it displays various products, services or views, these are not necessarily endorsed or sanctioned by the Tasmanian Government.

West Australia Online

URL:http://www.westaustraliaonline.com

Catering to local information about Western Australia. This site provides information specific to West Australia and Australia in general. It provides information in the categories of holiday index, web directory and news related to Western Australia.

Queensland Web or the QldWeb Database

URL:http://qldweb.slq.qld.gov.au/

Contains links to resources on the World Wide Web about Queensland. This includes resources published or mirrored on Web servers in Queensland and major Australian resources of interest to people living in Queensland. Personal home pages and commercial web sites are generally not included.

Other search engines

Allofaustralia

URL:http://www.allofaustralia.com/

More arguably a link farm than a search engine, this site is "cross-linked" with many “search engines” such as allofafrica.com, allofargentina.com and hundreds of other country and city specific sites. In effect, the search results here are not proprietary.

Squizz

URL:http://www.squizz.com.au/

An old Australian directory that was never able to take off as a search engine. With only 765 sites indexed, this Australian directory was designed to add value to Australian content. It was designed to offer a unique collection of quality resources in a wide variety of interest areas. It would also offer categorized listings of authoritative Australian Internet resources.