Australian Search Engines and Directories

If you're looking specifically for Australian information online, many of the top US search tools now offer regional versions of their services, allowing filtered searching within the country's websites.

Search engines in Australia

Australia, like many countries, is dominated by the local version of Google, and has achieved a monopoly in the search market with 94% of all searches, according to StatCounter. The only main alternative is the local version of Microsoft's Bing search engine with just under 4% of the market. Other options that may be used by some people, but still have a very low market share are Yahoo7, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.

We recently published an article comparing the main search engines that provide alternatives to Google in our blog.

Genuine search engines developed in Australia were few and far between. They were often mostly run by software companies as a showpiece of their technology, yet struggled in the face of the big US search engines, both in terms of brand name, accuracy and size of index. Search sites like Ansearch, Anzwers and WebWombat no longer exist.

Directories

Most of the 'home-grown' search tools that only cover Australian websites tend to be compiled directories and these vary in their depth and quality of information. There are few genuinely useful Australian directories covering a broad range of subjects and websites, but the most notable site is:

• Ezilon - a broad directory based on the old Open Directory listings.

Other directories such as AussieWeb and ComeOnAussie may have been around for some years but are limited in their depth and tend to be business directories that attract free or sometimes paid listings, so are less comprehensive than the search engines.

Finally, one issue often overlooked by Australian websites is the use of a .com.au domain name as several key search engines will only list sites using this domain within Australian-specific searches. Therefore if you are targeting the Australian market it will be important to not just restrict your website to a .com domain name, but have a .com.au site available for indexing as well, or as an alternative, to have the site hosted on an Australian server to be identified as a 'local' property.

To find out how your website can achieve a top ranking on these Australian search engines by contact us for more information or to request a FREE website assessment.