What search engines should I be most concerned about?

The ranking and importance of search engines change nearly as much as the algorithms that change within them.  But as history dictates the three most important search engines used on the internet are Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.  These three search engines combined comprise nearly 100% of all of the searches done on the internet.  So there is no need to concern yourself with any others.

At the time of this writing this is how the search engines were organized into groups:

• Google and Partners
  AOL Search
  Netscape
  Go.com
  iwon
• Yahoo! and Partners
  AllTheWeb
  AltaVista
• Inktomi and Partners
  Lycos
  MSN
  Overture
  Hotbot
• Teoma and Partners
  Ask Jeeves

On February of 2005 Google roughly had 47% of the market, followed by Yahoo! with 21%, and MSN with 13%.  At last count Yahoo! and MSN were rapidly closing the gap on Google.  At one point about one year ago Google had over 70% of the market.  Even with all things considered just a few percent comprises of millions of people.

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