I would say that the first SE that can set guidelines for webmaster, follow those guidelines and hold all to the same set of standards no matter how small or large you are as a company, brand themselves, try and become a friend to the webmaster community as Matt is trying to and most important rid their engine of spam will be the search engine that propels its way to the top market share. To poke a little fun also the first SE that gets rid of DMOZ

Right now Google is not following its own mission statement of Do No Evil, they are trying but have shown that they will turn a blind eye to spam that is sitting in front of them. Matt/ Google is trying to relate to the webmaster community to build a strong relationship but hasnt shown it can act yet on all the advice this community is offering. Its almost like if you want to protect your home, hire a thief the build you a security system. Google has had some effect on spam but has not addressed what has been placed directly in front of them with spam and this sets an example that leads spammers to believe that Google might overlook these tactics if it is in Googles best interest.

Yahoo doesnt know what they are doing. Yahoo seems to be a bit confused. Yahoo is trying to impliment aspects from Google and MSN. Yahoo however has applied a set of standards that they seem to hold ALL TO and not just SOME, so for this they score the top grade above all search engines. As for Yahoo branding, it seems they lack the ability to market themselves to the mass public and have all but given up to compete with Google.

MSN, now this is IMHO right now is the only company that has the ability to compete with Google. MSN is still miles behind Google but they are working to create a SE that offers more relevancy than Google does at this present moment. MSN has the same problem though of addressing spam as Google does. Even though IMO MSN results are more relevant than Google’s, MSN results contain a lot of sites in the top of their serps that use spam techniques and I dont believe that they have the ability yet for their bot to detect a lot of spam. As for branding IMO again I forsee MSN as being the only company that has the financial backing to brand their name beyond what Google has already achieived for internet search. With a few buyouts here and there by both MSN and Google it should make the future of both search engines very interesting.

Maybe a company such as Ask can come in and take the mistakes that all the big three engines have made and not learn from as it appears then create an elite SE. IMO the general public is becoming more educated about the internet. The SE that is able to meet the consumers needs and the needs of the small mom and pop company who has a vested interest on the WWW will become the choice for the general public. There are more mom and pop companies out there than giant corporations on the internet, there are more average Joe users out there than techno geeks. The idea that whoever has the largest index, highest stock prices, most technology or coolest name should not suggest a long term monopoly of the internet and again IMO doesnt mean anything to the general public.

Great to have a bit of industry affirmation for Gary – big ups to him on his Ask move!

It’s seems with all of Gary’s experience, they should make a new search engine called “Ask Gary”.

I’m relatively new to your blog, but it’s certainly fantastic reading and full of useful tips. Keep it comin’.

If there is such a thing, yes. IMO, the way around this would be to block one within a robots.txt file.