Search tools and services have developed synchronously in the year 2005 and it seems that the Web is ruled and directed highly by the search engine industry. Day by day, search engines have become an important part of the Internet. During this particular year, the use of search engines on a typical day increased from 30 to 41 percent of the Internet-using population. At the same time, the total number of people using search engines on a particular day jumped from roughly 38 million to about 59 million — a rough increase of 55 percent. Though E-mail still remains the prime internet activity, search engines are nearly edging up with e-mails.
Ask Jeeves led as the fastest growing search player out of the top five search engines, booming to 77 percent in search volume, while Google maintained its leader position with the largest market share of nearly half of all searches, or 48 percent, by generating 2.4 billion requests.
The top four search players, Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL have maintained the same rankings in the past five months with little to no change in market share
A newly launched search portal named Info.com provides the unique facility of blending together or
separately from Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search and Ask Jeeves. This facility provides the users the unique facility of a combination of best filtered results.
There is also a considerable amount of increase in the accuracy & database related to the image, video & audio searches.
The best search engine – Google, too has come with much advancement in itself. It has established Google Video which enables the user to search for TV programs, a web accelerator, which saves time online by loading web pages faster. It also provides the ride finder facility which enables the user to search for taxi, limousine or shuttle using real time position of vehicles. Google also provides the facility of getting a search box that customizes results based on your website and also automatically creates sets of items from a few examples. Google also introduced a service called Froogle wherein a user can search for products through his mobile. Like Froogle, Shopping.com as well as Bizrate too flourished in 2005, providing the user a better platform to shop on, whether it maybe on the cell phone or the computer.
Similarly, Yahoo! to introduced a new service in which users can directly ask questions which are answered by real time operators. This service resulted in accuracy in the result as well as increase in the rate of user satisfaction.
Nearly all of the mega search engines have come up with the concept of ‘labs’ or ‘blogs’. This is a service by which the search portals offer the previews of latest updates & services in their engine to the users. Of all the major engines, Microsoft offers the widest array of resources providing insight into the innermost workings of the company's search efforts.
Yahoo also publishes the Yahoo Search Blog. Shopping search site Shopzilla opened Shopzilla Labs, featuring a demo site they call Robozilla, showcasing new shopping search technology. Many of the computer scientists working at the search engines publish papers or speak at conferences, often providing valuable insights into Research & Development work at their companies. Also, these portals have started providing more attention to the comments & suggestions of the users through Forums by which they can be able to meet the demands of the users.
While many search engines are able to reach billions of Web pages, sorting the results of each query is still an issue and hence page ranking algorithms have been utilized to present a better ranked result. The idea is: more relevant pages must take a higher rank. Basic ranking algorithms are based on the occurrence rate of index terms in each page. Also, search engines provide the better options to customize the results – by location, by language as well as by other possible meansThese user friendly features allow the user to filter the results of his query the way he wishes to.
For the betterment of the search engines formats like XML, XHTML and other softwares to provide the maximum accuracy & flexibility to a portal. Also, these portals have started using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) which provides faster conversions, increase the web traffic, faster ROI, better reliability, increase the market share & also reduce the total costs. This became needful due to the increasing competition as well as the requirement of more stability as well as more marketing needs. Also a new concept called the PPC or Pay per click search engines were established which enabled the advertiser to get paid for every click that was made on the link of his site, thus enhancing the shore of advertising (For e.g. FindWhat, Kanoodle, Looksmart). User centered SEOs provide the maximum accuracy for the results than the engine centered SEOs. SEO continues to be the leading innovating search engine marketing firm. SEO also provides a better environment for keyword researching & providing more useful spell check suggestions to the end user. SEO also provides the best tools, add-ons & softwares and tactics, managing the clients & projects, handling the cost affairs & provide the best result online.