How important are search engines other than the popular ones?

I personally only use Google for searching. But I'm at least aware of some of others (Yahoo, MSN, etc). Now, I'm at a stage where I'm looking to promote my site and questioning the importance of all these unknown search engines. I can spend $$ and get listed in the top ten of at least 100 search engines, but what difference does it make if I'm listed #1 if nobody ever uses these sites.

Can someone explain to me why?

Thanks in advance,

 

In general, one should always aim to appear in all 3 of the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo), as they all have a lot of visitors. Remember, MSN.com is the default startpage in the Internet Explorer, and remains just that for a lot of people.

All the major search engines provide a variety of services (Google video/maps/groups etc., MSN messenger, Yahoo News), and have quite a large audience because of this.

Also, Googles is estimated to be the leader by a substantial margin (depending on language/country), but even 1% of all searches performed accounts for a lot (seriously, A LOT) of people.

So, don't simply rely on Google. At the very least, aim to appear in all 3 major SE's and perhaps some niche search engines.

 

Thanks for the response.

I do agree with the top 3 (Yahoo, Google, MSN), and your reasons make more sense now.

 

Yeah don't worry about anything other then the top 3. The others will spider and index your site if you are listed in the top 3.