SEO:Microsoft

The most recent major search engine is MSN Search, owned by Microsoft, which previously relied on others for its search engine listings. In 2004 it debuted a beta version of its own results, powered by its own web crawler (called msnbot). In early 2005 it started showing its own results live. This was barely noticed by average users unaware of where results come from, but was a huge development for many webmasters, who seek inclusion in the major search engines.

At the same time, Microsoft ceased using results from Inktomi, now owned by Yahoo.

This meant the market was now dominated by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The other large (self described) search engines tend to be "portals" that merely show the results another company's search engine (like MSN Search used to do). The other "true" search engines (those that provide their own results), like Gigablast, have vastly less market presence than the big three. However, since site usage is proprietary information, it's often difficult to determine which sites are most popular.

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