Where do search engines get their data from? Other search engines!

Posted by Jim Stroud

February 27, 2006

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Here is an interesting chart that all Sourcers should have on their wall and check regularly for the most up-to-date info. Its called “The Search Engine Relationship Chart” and it is diagram explaining where search engines get their data and (surprise) a lot of it is from other search engines.

Here is a peek at what it looks like.

I thought this was interesting because at first glance, this seems to be true…

Searching Ask Jeeves is the same as searching: iWon, Hotbot, Lycos and Teoma
Searching Lycos is the same as searching DMOZ, Google and Ask Jeeves
Searching Google is the same as searching Google, Netscape, AOL Search and DMOZ
Searching Yahoo is the same as searching Inktomi, AltaVista and All The Web
Searching MSN is the same as searching MSN (Plus a few ads from Yahoo, until MSN’s own advertising engine officially debuts)

Hmmm… It seems to me that searching other engines will get you data that would (probably) be found somewhere else, but more unique data would be located on MSN as it does not receive results (beyond ads) from other search engines. All that to say, do yourself a favor! The next time you source online you must include MSN in your search strategy instead of relying only on that “other” engine.