Later we learned that InfoSpace, who runs the Infospace.com metasearch engine, bought the Excite.com domain, it's trademarks, and some related assets. However, Infospace sold many of Excite's assets to Iwon. Rumor has it that Infospace snatched up Excite.com for less than $10 million. If true, that's quite a bargain considering Excite was valued at over a billion dollars at its peak.

So what will become of Excite.com? Infospace says not to worry, the engine will continue to operate, but will use Infospace search technology in the future. Currently Infospace is a metasearch engine, drawing results from other sites like Overture, Looksmart, FindWhat, Sprinks, About, and ePilot in that order. Therefore, if you have good rankings on these sites, particularly Overture and Looksmart, you will probably rank well on the "new" Excite.com when it changes.

Web marketers may have one less engine to worry about optimizing pages for which can be a good thing for those who feel overwhelmed by their SEO to do tasks. For those of you who lose rankings from the change, you may not be as excited.

What is unclear at this point is what is to happen with the Excite crawler and search technology. Current reports do not clearly specify whether iWon or Infospace acquired this technology, or whether it's still in bankruptcy limbo. It would seem to be a shame to not license it to someone.

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