Which Search Engine Do you Recommend?

For the past few years, Google is ruling over the web. So my vote also goes with it. The major reason behind its ultra fame is its dynamic and sometimes challenging behavior.
But other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, Ask are also good.

Google of course but I still use Dogpile from time to time as it neatly brings up results from multiple search engines (that said the way they integrate sponsored ads now is annoying)

Sure Google is the best. But you better check all of them. Maybe your competitors forgot to optimize for Bing and its your chance

This is definitely a great response.

Google is definitely the top dog, so to speak, but that does not mean everybody on the face of the earth uses it... The small percentage of people who use other search engines still make up a good amount of users, and they are real people, with real money (assuming that's the goal of your site).

Nope, but the reality is, (search engine wise) it is more cost effective and productive to optimise for Google, as this will include 99% of the others.

I think it will get more interesting as social search signals start to pick up, and we then have to optimise for the like of facebook, although if you start using the right markup language now, then you already are

There is already some pretty strong indication that certain metrics such at how many time a link that you tweet gets re-tweeted are ranking signals for search engines. Ignoring social media could be a costly mistake!

I do agree however that if you use white hat tactics to optimize for Google, the rest will surely follow.

Bing gets my vote its search results are much better than the other Search Engines - problem is it lags a long way behind Google in market share - but I think it will grow as its better quality.

Now, as soon as I saw this post I was going to instinctively write Google (and I personally use Google Chrome). But I also think it's important to support emerging search engines too, not just always rely on the biggest of the big boys. As owners and employees of small businesses, we all understand the perils of growing a business with competition that is the size of Google! So, there are many good search engines, you need to research them all and pick the best for you!

All of them is really the answer!!

I use a DIY SEO system called SEO Scheduler and I find it pretty good!

altavista? is it still around?

Google sends by far the largest volume of traffic so making sure you have a high google ranking is a must