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PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Engines:

Overture - lost a bid against Google for AOL's listings however they have the listings on Yahoo for the next three years and still must be considered the largest PPC search engine on the web. Fast and targeted advertising. Excellent reporting and bidding structure although the help support can be slow (up to 48 hours).

Find What - an emerging PPC engine with bid prices averaging half the amount on Overture. There are a large number of affiliate sites earning commission through FindWhat however their quality controls keep fake clicks to a minimum. Good reporting and helpful staff.

Google Adwords - a fairly new player in the PPC market, Google does have the clout to come up against the likes of Overture. The reporting system has a very difficult interface although after speaking to David Lee the Internation Buisness Manager from Google it appears they are working on an improved UI.

Sprinks - recently (Apr02) launched a new reporting system and culled a large number of their affiliate sites due to massive fake click traffic. Staff are difficult to contact. Sprinks is owned by and based around the About.com portal.

Espotting - UK based PPC engine which uses sites such as BTLooksmart and Ask Jeeves for traffic. Has fairly low traffic rates compared to other PPC engines and the accounts are dealt in pound sterling.

Crawlers: (results appear in order of relevancy)

Global Search Engines Google: Without question the best and most popular crawler based engine. Link popularity is a large factor when dealing with Google rankings. Fast: Recently claims to index 2.1 billion sites putting them ahead of Google. Main engine for Lycos and thier own product AlltheWeb. Northernlight: Standalone crawler focused heavily on business related searches. Teoma: Main crawler feeder for DirectHit - provider to AskJeeves and Hotbot.. Askjeeves: UK based search engine. Uniquely uses full questions to search database. AOL: Major ISP in USA feed predominantly through Inktomi and Dmoz databases. Lycos: Sources traffic Fast and Dmoz with focus on branded areas for users (e.g. Gamesville). Hotbot: Sources traffic from a variety of places. Part of the Lycos network. Netscape: Powered by Google and Dmoz. Has declining popularity in general.

Regional Search Engines (New Zealand) Access NZ: Australian and New Zealand filtered results from Google through Yahoo Australia and NZ. NZ Explorer: New Zealand based crawler engine - NZ specific sites only included. Search NZ: New Zealand based crawler engine - linked to NZ Search web directory.

Directories: (results grouped by catagory)

Global Directories dmoz: Human edited directory listing (purely volunteer based). Powers a large majority of the directory based searches on the web. Inktomi: Major provider of listings to Looksmart, AOL, iwon, MSN, Hotbot. Yahoo: Directory based search with crawler listings provided by Google. Looksmart: Changed to fully paid lisitngs in early 2002. Now facing public backlash.

Regional Directories (New Zealand) Access NZ: Purely New Zealand listings. Anzwers: Australian and New Zealand filtered results from Google through Yahoo Australia and NZ. Looksmart New Zealand: Not considered a high priority by CEO of Looksmart Australia due to the low traffic rate. Ongoing development is therefore quite limited. NZ Pages: NZ Directory. NZ Search: NZ Directory - linked with Search NZ crawler engine.

Meta-Crawlers: (results are top groups from other engines)

Global Meta-Crawler Search Engines iwon: Portal designed to draw visitors through prizes for clicking links. MSN: Microsoft's search engine which has native support in Internet Explorer. Excite: Portal with results fed from Looksmart.

Regional Meta-Crawler Search Engines (New Zealand) xtraMSN: Microsoft's joint-venture with Xtra (Key ISP in New Zealand).