Top 5 Search engines?

[Romeo]

The top three search engines I know
1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. MSN
Which SE's deserve the fourth and fifth place in the above hierarchy?

[Peter]

Altavista
Lycos
Excite

I guess any two of the above three can take the fourth and fifth spot in the top 5 search engines.

[Rodney]

It is really very difficult to say that the top five search engines across the World Wide Web be the same. It really depends on the fact that how much weightage each search engine gives to the other search engines and vice versa. Here are few interesting results for the top five search engines. Accordingly any search engine can be at 4th and 5th position respectively.

Google:
1. Google
2. Yahoo!
3. Search.com
4. Altavista
5. Excite

Yahoo!:
1. Google
2. Netscape
3. AOL
4. MSN
5. Search.com

MSN:
1. MSN
2. AskJeeves
3. HotBot
4. Yahoo!
5. Search.com

[Nik]

As per the top Search engines there is not any fix position of any search engine. The position of every SE varies from the other according to the top SE's. Among the top 10 SE's Dave has listed few of them the rest of the search engines according to the top 10 search engines are as follows:

Search.com:
1. Google
2. Lycos
3. Altavista
4. Webcrawler
5. HotBot

Lycos:
1. Search.com
2. AllTheWeb
3. MSN
4. [search.ch]
5. Google

Altavista:
1. Altavista
2. 37 Search Engines
3. Search.com
4. MSN
5. 89.com

AllTheWeb:
1. Search.com
2. AllTheWeb
3. MSN
4. [search.ch]
5. Google

AOL:
1. AOL
2. Search.com
3. Yahoo!
4. Altavista
5. Google

Webcrawler:
1. Lycos
2. Search.com
3. Google
4. Yahoo!
5. iWon

Excite:
1. Lycos
2. Search.com
3. Google
4. Yahoo!
5. iWon

[sanderson]

There is a mixture of search engines, you can see here. There are search engines for different purporses.

Exactly which search engines we are considering over here.

As I see some are mentioning general search engines, some of the lists are messed with bots and engines.

What exactly here we are looking for or getting at?

Can somebody explain it? Will be thankful.

[chris]

It's the question of just the top 5 search engines in general terms , thats' it , nothing in particular i guess Mod.

[Peter]

The thread starter needs everyone's opinion regarding the next best search engines after the top 3 that is Google, Yahoo and MSN. Which according to you are the two next best search engines to complete the top 5?