Search Engines
Kirk Bannerman
For the first few months after Yahoo decided to go their own way with natural search (and
MSN decided to get serious about the search business), the search results provided by
those two could only be described as bizarre. Enough time has now passed that the dust has
somewhat settled and there are three main (from a traffic standpoint) sites for quality
natural searches.
The term "natural search" is to distinguish true searches, as opposed to paid
advertisements which appear in the search results for many search engines these days. I
guess you can't really fault the search engine companies from wanting to make some money
(actually, BIG money) selling ad space, but the debate over the virtues of natural search
versus paid advertising search is something that could take up a very large book and still
have no clear resolution...much like arguments revolving around religion or politics.
Like most people that have been working as online home business entrepreneurs for a few
years, I was strongly conditioned to the need to "feed the 800 pound gorilla" of
the search engine world. Basically, "if Google didn't love you", it was very
difficult to get any meaningful natural search traffic to your website. Since Google was
actually the search engine that was serving up the results for most of the popular search
portals, if Google didn't look kindly upon your site and rank you well, you would not be
ranked well for most of the high traffic search sites on the Internet.
However, the search landscape changed dramatically early in 2004 and things have been very
fluid and interesting since that time. Its not that Google has stumbled, or become
ineffective as a search vehicle, its just that major players like Yahoo and Microsoft (via
MSN) have decided to make a major thrust into the search business.
Having been firmly conditioned (since shortly after 1998) that Google was the
"supreme deity of search engines", I took the highly publicized search entries
of Yahoo and MSN with more than the proverbial "grain of salt".
Throughout a very recent two month period, one of my websites occupied the #5 position on
Google, Yahoo, and MSN for a very popular and important (at least in my line of business)
three word search term. This situation provided an opportunity to measure the current
popularity of each of these three search providers.
If asked "before the fact", I would have guessed that Google would still be the
overwhelming #1 search choice and that Yahoo and MSN would be distant #2 and #3 choices.
Therefore, I was somewhat surprised by the results that were tabulated during this recent
60 day period.
For the period in question, the search popularity results were as follows:
Google: 34%
Yahoo: 31%
MSN: 20%
All others: 15%
Granted, the above results are for a single search term over a particular 60 day time
period, but the results clearly show that Yahoo and MSN are already important players in
the search business.
Webmasters that stick to the old ways and focus entirely on Google are missing out on a
lot of search traffic these days if they are not also well ranked by Yahoo and MSN.
About the Author:
Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and coaches others seeking to
start their own home based business. Visit his website at Legitimate Home Based Business for more
details.
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