From an SEO standpoint, there is consensus among experts - Google, Yahoo and MSN are it. However, there’s a yappy little underdog called Teoma, which, despite its size, is a good contender in the search engine stakes. Teoma, which means "expert" in Gaelic, is owned by Ask Jeeves and powers the algorithmic search results on their properties (like Ask.com, Excite.com).

Yes, there's a big technology difference between Teoma and the other "big three" but Teoma does it differently with its localized approach. As Ammon Johns explained it in the MarketingProfs Thought Leaders Summit on SEO:

PageRank and link popularity is a bit like going out into the street and asking everyone who the best scientist is — you are going to get the obvious names: Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking. They’re popular answers.

Teoma looks within the topic. It finds the authority sites within the topic related to "scientists" and then asks "Who is the best scientist?" Chances are, Teoma is going to come up with names you have never heard of before, but are actually much better answers. It gives you the specialist answer instead of the popular answer.

Another difference with Teoma is that it is keyword-dependent. So when you type "blue widgets" into that search box, it pulls the community together and conducts a local search which refines and finds the authoritative sites on that particular subject.

The model of organizing the Web into topical communities and pinpointing the authorities (pages that have garnered a lot of inbound links from reputable, topically-relevant pages) and the hubs (those pages that link to a lot of reputable, topically-relevant pages) is an important model to grasp (read more about it in Mike Grehan's paper on topic distillation), because I predict that all the major engines will become keyword-dependent over time. If you grasp this concept now and are picky about the sites you garner links from and link to, then you'll be doing a lot to futureproof your SEO.

I find it a bit unbelievable that the major search engines — Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves — still don't offer RSS feed searching combined with RSS search results feeds as part of their Web search. Specialized RSS feed search engines like Feedster, PubSub and Technorati have risen to the occasion, filling the void left by the major engines' inaction. Bloglines, the AskJeeves-owned company, has announced a blog/RSS search engine service that'll compete with Feedster, PubSub, and Technorati, but still that's a far cry from embedding RSS search right into the Web search box.

Here's how each of the majors handles RSS feeds:

Google:

• has URLs of valid RSS feeds in its index (due to links that point to those feeds)
• doesn't recognize the XML file format of RSS feeds (as you can read on the excerpted screenshots above)
• only rarely indexes the feed (I base that not just on the fact that nearly all RSS feeds are shown in Google results with no title or snippet as in the first screenshot above, but also because, out of 64,000 RSS feed files hosted by feeds.feedburner.com, only 19 are shown to contain the word cheese, the last 2 of which show up in the results only because cheese appears in links pointing to the feed; yet the same search on Yahoo! shows over 400. So clearly a lot of files that should have matched are missing from the Google search results.)
• only rarely caches the XML (see example) with most caches being blank (like this)
• associates words in links pointing to the page (as demonstrated with this search)
• doesn't allow refining of your query with the operators — filetype:rss, filetype:xml, or filetype:rdf

Yahoo:

• has URLs of valid RSS feeds in its index
• indexes the feed (Evidenced by above screenshot, which was a match for a search on text contained within the feed. Also, ResearchBuzz found this to be the case too.)
• caches the XML (see example)
• doesn't display the "Add to My Yahoo!" link for RSS feed listings (this is a disappointing omission, as Yahoo! displays this link on listings for HTML pages that have an associated RSS feed but not for the listing of the RSS feed itself)
• associates words in links pointing to the page
• doesn't allow refining of your query with the operators — filetype:rss, filetype:xml, or filetype:rdf

MSN Search:

• doesn't have URLs of valid RSS feeds in its index (Evidence of this: not a single feed out of 64,000 feeds at feeds.feedburner.com is displayed, even though there are links that point to those feeds. Note that the couple feeds that are displayed are not valid feeds but error pages outputted in HTML.)
• doesn’t recognize the XML file format of RSS feeds (file type is displayed in the search listing after Cached link when it's a recognized non-HTML file type)
• doesn't index the feed
• doesn't cache the XML
• doesn't allow refining of your query with the operators — filetype:rss, filetype:xml, or filetype:rdf

Teoma (Ask Jeeves):

• has URLs of valid RSS feeds in its index
• indexes the feed
• (View Cached feature not supported by Teoma)
• associates words in links pointing to the page
• (filetype: operator not supported by Teoma)

As you can see from my little comparison, MSN Search is the farthest behind when it comes to RSS feed indexing. Hopefully Scoble will read this and tell the MSN Search team to get on the ball. ;-)

Even though the major engines have been slow to make RSS an integral part of their indices, I predict that the engines will, within the next year or so, wake from their slumber and overtake and even acquire their specialized RSS feed search engine competitors.

What that will mean for web marketers is that search engine optimizing RSS feeds will become a science unto itself (currently it's limited mainly to optimizing the item titles for purposes of link text on syndicating sites) and that the feeds that are not optimized will get drowned out by those that are.

I'm in sunny Orlando at the Annual Catalog Conference... In yesterday's Q&A With the Search Engines session, Matt Lydon, Senior Sales Director of Search at MSN, stated quite categorically that they will not offer paid inclusion, the practice where advertisers can buy their way into the natural (organic) search results (but without any control over actual rankings).

Google frowns on the practice of paid inclusion and has previously vowed never to offer it, whereas Yahoo! offers it through their Site Match Exchange program.

I wonder if at some point the FTC will put a stop to paid inclusion because there is no disclosure to the searcher that it's a paid search result...

Hat tip to Steve Rubel for pointing out the new MSN Shopping engine, now in beta. I can't say I'm overly impressed with it. It does feel kinda like Froogle, with the price range selector on the left side, but it is way over the top with all the graphic logos on the right side. The search results pages load a bit slow for my taste. I tried a search for "canon digital cameras" and got appalling results: not even ONE of the top 10 products was an actual camera! All I got on the first page of results was lenses, cases, photo paper, a warranty, and a camcorder. And of those 10 results, they were all from either J&R Music and Computer World or B&H Photo and Video. Contrast that with the same "canon digital cameras" search on Froogle, and every single one of the top 10 results were digital cameras (made by Canon, I might add). And to top it off, the Froogle SERP loaded over 3 times faster than the MSN Shopping SERP. Microsoft, you guys have your work cut out for ya.