An excellent post by Orion on the topic he named Who bombs Whom?, which he admits he should of named "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Queries". Here is does some queries on keyword phrases at the various search engines.
A search for "bad search engine" without quotes shows that 1. In Google, Yahoo.com is #2 out of 4,650,000 results 2. In Yahoo!, MSN.com is #1 out of 6,330,000 results 3. In MSN, MSN.com is #1 out of 1,323,674 results. 4. In Teoma, GO.com is #2 and Search.com is #3 out of 3,178,000 results.
A search for "good search engine" without quotes shows that 1. In Google, DogPile.com (a metaengine) is #1 out of 8,520,000 results. 2. In Yahoo!, DogPile.com (a metaengine) is #1 out of 15,000,000 results 3. In MSN, DogPile.com (a metaengine) is #1 out of 3,112,205 results. 4. In Teoma, Yahoo.com is #1 and Teoma is #3 out of 9,448,000 results.
Check out the thread.