The news that Microsoft and Yahoo! plan to join forces to compete with Google makes it clear that SEOs can no longer concentrate on obtaining high rankings on just one search engine. Google has long dominated the search marketplace, but there are still other search engines that, if you properly optimize for them, will drive relevant traffic to your site. And while Google may be on top now, the company is only a decade old and there’s no telling what the future holds for it. It probably won’t happen tomorrow, but consumers may very well jump ship if Microsoft/Yahoo! develops a superior product.
The latest statistics from Hitwise, an Experian company that tracks Internet traffic, show that Google’s marketshare is at 71.42 percent, far ahead of Yahoo!’s 17.18 percent, Bing’s 8 percent and Ask’s 2.47 percent. When Microsoft’s Bing becomes Yahoo!’s default search engine, the two companies will presumably have roughly 25 percent of the marketshare. Obviously, ignoring a quarter of the market is not a wise business decision, especially when there’s evidence that its gaining headway. So far, Microsoft has done a good job at piquing the public’s curiosity about Bing, and SEOs have praised the relevancy of its results.
The number of visitors your site gets from search engines other than Google largely depends on the nature of your organization. In the last month, this site has gotten 26.5 percent of its search engine traffic from Yahoo! and Bing. An IT company whose site we manage, however, got only about 5 percent of search engine traffic from them, even though it ranks well on both. That’s likely because its tech-savvy clientele is more devoted to Google. They tend to favor Google’s stripped-down approach to search.
Since their algorithms are different, it takes extra work to ensure your site ranks highly on all the search engines. Optimizing for Google doesn’t automatically lead to high rankings on its rival sites. While Google’s algorithm seems to be the most advanced, its competitors appear to be catching up. Years ago, it was possible to rank highly through black-hat techniques like link farming and keyword stuffing, but that’s no longer the case. Today, search engines do a good job of weeding out the spammers for the most part. The ones that do slip through the cracks almost always fall off the map completely at some point. The only to obtain long-lasting results is to use above-board tactics that are actually encouraged by search engine developers.
