Have you ever tried searching for search engine on Google? I was surprised by the results (as of today):
- AltaVista
- Dogpile
- Yahoo! Search
- Ask
- Lycos
- Wikipedia entry on ‘Search Engines’
- Webcrawler
- SearchEngineWatch.com
- Live.com
- Search Engine Colossus (had never heard of this before)
Google.com didn’t show up in the search results until page 3, coming in at number 27.
You’d think that the company that was responsible for the rise of the SEO industry would be better at playing it’s own game 🙂
8 replies on “Searching For ‘Search Engine’ On Google”
Yeah, but “google” is a verb, there’s no need for SEO when your name is a verb.
You don’t “Yahoo” something, or “AltaVista” for something on the internet, you google it.
And besides, Google is so much more than a search engine, but that’s a whole other blog post…
That’s really surprising. 🙂
May be Google have forgotten that it’s the search engine, immersed in different amazing new activities?
Or may be it is convinced that he’s popular enough and there’s no need to show himself on “search engine” inquiry?
Or may be G is not a search engine now, it’s more. It’s Google. 🙂
“…google is a verb…” too funny. I’m sure their trademark lawyers just love that. 😀
Colossus. Wow, That’s a blast from the past. Searching for “search engine” has been around for a while and it is always interesting what turns up. A few years ago, Google was in the top 10 when I first tried this. Colossus wasn’t there, but Dogpile was up near the top.
It’s interesting to me to travel outside of the US and see the popularity of a lot of different search engines and directories rarely noticed in the monopoly content United States. It would be even more interesting if those search results came with some comparative stats. Competition is still alive elsewhere in the world.
Yeah, but it’s number 2 on Yahoo 🙂
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=search+engine&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
Once you’re at Google, Google doesn’t need to be in their own search results to get you to their site.
I don’t know, but it looked to me like you were searching on Google, meaning… You’re looking at the search engine itself. What’s the point of having a link in the results that points to the page you’re already at? Google knows this of course….
Clearly Google wasn’t concerned about not having their own link in the results, because it’s there on page 3.
You’d be surprised what people type into the search box.
I’ve also searched on “Search Engine” out of curiosity. I found the results pretty funny too. 🙂 I think it is good to see they’re not just slapping themselves at the top regardless of their content relevancy.
I think there’s something else to learn from this. Perhaps SEO is less important (in ways) than one would think. Usable products and services (like and unlike Google) should always place usability and user experience before SEO…
What are your thoughts about WordPress? Did it become popular through SEO or through word of mouth in it’s community?
There’s too much I could think and type about about in one little comment that’s getting too long.
I don’t think the biggest factor behind WordPress becoming popular was SEO.