E N Brown said
6 months, 3 weeks ago: Hello Michelle @michellefontaine
It’s impossible to find actual SEO companies online (easily). Especially at Google, Bing and Yahoo. Somewhat because of the advertisements such as pay-per-click. You have to know someone by word of mouth to get a legit company and/or have an agency who ferrets out the really experienced companies. Plus, if you use Google as your default browser, you have been profiled and your results are skewed unless you know how to filter them (and your privacy is out the window.).
Using search at the three main SEs is no way to find a consultant. You can check there to see how their own companies rank and that can be a good moniker for the ability of the company to do the work, but it is only one point.
One really big item to check is to use “betterwhois.com” to get the date of registration of the website. If it is fairly new, you know they don’t have the experience. Plus, if they don’t want anyone to know who owns the company and have that information protected, they may not be legit either. Then check “senderbase.org” to check their SPAM rating.
As to the search engines you mentioned – three of those are quite legit. For about a year after launch I used Duckduckgo as my default browser. As a web developer I really liked the privacy, as that search engine does not collect (your) data from your searches. You actually get what you searched for at Duckduckgo too. I love it, but do have to use Google as my default for the very purposes of keeping up with what works there and what doesn’t.
Blekko is another really great search engine as is Yandex. I have about a half a dozen search engines on my quick access bar (chrome) as I use these all the time. Google, Bing and Yahoo are not included but I check them more often but very rarely use them if I am searching for actual information for myself. Ixquick is another privacy oriented search engine – In 2009 Ixquick completely ended the recording of user IP addresses.
At any rate, as far as the search engines – your short list is incidental as any company who states “TOP search engines” and does not include Google, Bing and Yahoo in that statement is simply not speaking the truth, so that advertisement is a blatant lie.
As far as all the search engine go, I use Blekko and Duckduckgo for industry research, almost on a daily basis. I get better results.
This of course, is because I am a web developer (and content writer). If a “web developer” does not know about these search engines, they are also not what they purport to be. I would not expect just anyone to know about the hundreds of search engines that exist out there today. The very first web search engine was “Archie.” I know this as my first website went online in 1992 – the very year Archie appeared.
Eileen 
