New Zealand search engines and directories

If you're looking specifically for New Zealand information, many of the top US search tools now offer regional versions of their services, allowing restricted searching within a country's websites.

Search engines

New Zealand is currently covered by regional versions of the main global search engines - Google,, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search - as well as versions of the older US search tools, such as AltaVista which is now rarely used.

Genuine search engines developed in New Zealand are few and far between. They are often mostly run by software companies as a showpiece of their technology, yet struggle in the face of the big US search engines, both in terms of brand name, accuracy and size of index. A few useful search engines are:

• Ansearch - launched at the end of 2004, the Ansearch site offers tabbed search options and displays results from its own database as well as sponsored results from Google AdWords.
• Anzwers - a well-established search engine and portal service which is owned by Ansearch and generates its own search results plus sponsored listings from Google.
• Search NZ - a small search engine dedicated to NZ websites.

Directories

Most of the 'home-grown' search tools that only cover New Zealand websites tend to be compiled directories and these vary in their depth and quality of information. There are few genuinely useful New Zealand directories covering a broad range of subjects and websites, but the most notable sites are:

• Ezilon - a broad directory based on Open Directory listings and including sponsored results from Google AdWords.
• Index NZ - a basic directory listing New Zealand sites only.
• NZS Directory - a dedicated directory of New Zealand sites, based on the Open Directory category structure and supplemented by Google AdWords sponsored results.
• NZ Search - this is the directory site associated with the Search NZ search engine, with categories and listings dedicated to NZ websites.

Finally, one issue often overlooked by New Zealand websites is the use of a .co.nz domain name as several key search engines will only list sites using this domain within New Zealand-specific searches. Therefore if you are targeting the New Zealand market it will be important to not just restrict your website to a .com domain name, but have a .co.nz site available for indexing as well, or in some cases having the site hosted on a New Zealand server will also be important.

To find out how your website can achieve a top ranking on these New Zealand search engines by contact us for more information or to request a FREE website assessment.