Nearly everyone involved in an Internet-based home business will very quickly come to realize the importance of search engines as a vehicle to attract potential customers.

Since the inception of Google in 1998, the popularity of using search engines has increased dramatically. Nielsen NetRatings reports that about 114.5 million Americans, or a whopping 39 percent of the US population, currently use search engines.

As of July of 2005, Google accounted for 36.5% of all searches and Yahoo accounted for 30.5%, according to ComScore Media Matrix. MSN ranked a distant third, accounting for15.5% of all searches.

The market shares of the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) have remained fairly constant throughout 2005 and together they account for over 80% of all searches.

As they vie for position, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft plan to continue upgrading their services - healthy competition that can only serve to improve the search experiences of Internet users in the future.

According to comScore Networks, an estimated 3.5 billion online searches are performed in the United States each month, making searching the second most popular online activity, ranking behind only e-mail.

In 2003, businesses spent an estimated $2 billion on advertising related to searches and some knowledgeable sources expect the search-related advertising market to triple during the next three years. Internet advertising as a whole is expected to exceed $13 billion in 2005.

There are various search engine formats including natural search, pay for inclusion (PFI), pay per click (PPC), and hybrid approaches which combine both PFI and PPC characteristics. Because of the immense and growing popularity of search engines, their effective utilization is the life blood of Internet-based home businesses.