Look how old this is! I post at SearchCommander.com now, and this post was published 19 years 2 months 18 days ago. This industry changes FAST, so blindly following the advice here *may not* be a good idea! If you're at all unsure, feel free to hit me up on Twitter and ask.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that AOL was close to striking a deal with Microsoft that would include the search results AOL displays. I wrote about this a while ago, but it’s coming closer. That means Microsoft will be making a big jump in market chare. How does your website rank in MSN? Have you been concentrating only on Google? Did you know that more women and older citizens actually prefer MSN of all the big 3 search engines?
I am of the opinion that microsoft will eventually purchase aol. First they are far bigger and have more cash than google or Yahoo. Also they would immediately become probably the #1 search engine in the world. Google presently is the search engine used by aol users on the start page. If microsoft purchased aol you know this would change. This would cut traffic to google by probably 20% and immediately add 20% more traffic to the msn search engine.
In my opinion msn has a much better search engine than google anyway. This would only serve to make things better for many aol subscribers.