Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 8:03 am by
J David 
Print this page Share This
The entire SEO field is fixated on Google. It is all about improving your PageRank and getting listed in Google’s search results. The other search players are secondary in the minds of the experts. And of course, this is with good reason. Google is the dominant force in the industry and not just because it is well know. It became well known thanks to its reliability and speed. But is the age of search engine parity upon us?
The Competition Makes A Push
Yahoo may have been in trouble for a while, but has been making a push as of late. It is has massive amounts of traffic and is beginning to leverage it. Ask has reinvented itself and even put on that strange marketing campaign with the Russian guy. But are those really sources of competition for Google?
Quite frankly, Yahoo is a bloated company that has overstretched its reach and Ask is just… silly (even after they dropped that Jeeves fellow). The interesting company, as far as search engine optimization is concerned, is Microsoft’s Live.
Up And Coming Or Flash In The Pan?
Out of all of these potential competitors, Microsoft has the deepest pockets and the user base to tackle a search giant like Google. And honestly, I think that the Live search engine is quite good as far as results and its interface is concerned. Now, its stats are catching up with its usability.
Looking at the numbers for month to month growth for Microsoft’s search engine, it was growing at a little over 13% from May to June. Then from June to July, they grew even faster, at nearly 18%. During those same periods, Google barely grew at all from May to June, while achieving only 8% growth from June to July. But as recently reported by Compete, Google has taken back the momentum. Nevertheless, this obviously gives us something to think about.
Google may not always be on top. Most SEO tactics are geared towards perfecting our results in Google. But just running a quick search on my own first name (J David), I didn’t turn up until the second page on Live, while on Google I was in the second overall position. I also tried it for the phrase “best myspace overlays” and I was the first result in Google, while on Live I was on the 5th page! My point is that, while we can get away with things like that now, these tactics may end up biting us in the butt.
Google Is Still King… For Now
Pronet Advertising has declared that we are back to our regularly scheduled searching. Google is still the dominant engine, but competitors may be coming up fast. John Chow didn’t put all of his eggs into the Google Adsense basket, so why are we doing it for their search engine?
I just read on another blog that a new search engine called Powerset is being launched which uses a new search technology. Wonder how well it will stand up to competition. The owner claims to give Google a run for its money.
I have never really focused on page rank, google doesn’t update it often enough for it to be a concern of mine. Besides, my site hasn’t updated yet, but I still get a steady stream of visitors.
Google is like the GOD of internet as of now. I don’t know about the future but right now definitely the google is the most popular. Yahoo is also very good infact I feel Yahoo gives a more detail picture of where your website stands rather than google as google updates it’s algo once in a while and not on regular basis. But all said and done everybody do have a fixation for google.
Google’s market share is now 65% in USA. Last year it was 62%. So there is nothing suprising with focusing on Google.
[…] Are You Too Focused on Google? by J DAvid Macor […]
Currently, Google is making the music and we are dancing. But whoever thinks tailing Google is the best way for his site in the long term - is wrong. Number one thing is and will be content. Have a great content and entice users, you don’t need PR6 then, simple as that.
I have to admit I am one of those that tend to put alot of significance on Page Rank. I spend wayyyy to much time reading, studing, learning and trying to find out more about getting good page rank.
To me, it’s the difference between having a store on main street, versus a store down to corner and to the left.
Google..yahoo.. live.. huh..huh
For a beginner there is no choice..difficult to think of people who will straight away come to your site, so it is toooo important to have an SEOed site.
Now which SE, common sense will say Google, they are leading (people say that). No harm in focusing over them. I have observer (not my site) but sites which are ranked good in Google, have decent ranking in others too. So in a way, looks like, working to optimize for Google, you work OK for others too.
And again, looks like good to sit on the shoulders of the giant, and hence Adwords will again help. I am no fan of Google, feel good for Yahoo, but you have to play by the rules of the game, which are defined by Google at the moment.
So as a beginner focus on Google, and keep working for others too.(Basically work and create content, and create good link and good blogs and good posts and good forums)
(I even wanted this comment to be good too.. sorry guys)
google definitely is the king but that graph looks like innacurate, yahoo has least share? it must have second largest share, am i wrong?
I agree with Awanish,
If you optimize your site for Google it will rank good in others as well, with so much documentation and so many tools, optimizing for google is easier (note: i said optimizing not ranking)
Google is the leader when it comes to the internet. In years to come I think Google will be running everything nearly. Sites like: Yahoo is good too, but I don’t think Yahoo has what it takes to beat Google. Google is like the 1st choice people use to search the internet. Google is like the 2nd name to the internet, I bet they never realized it would take off that much years back. Although I must admit Google is pretty fast and useful when it comes to searching the net
everyone tries to beat the ’system’ as its the only way to get to the ‘top’ …
in our case, into google ‘good books’ but i feel we should implement good whitehat rather than under-hand tactics.
getting penalized by google is not good eh
People will stop focussing on Google when Google isn’t king of the search engines - it’s as simple as that, really.
Google has too many credits I mean all the work they do no wonder they are the kings
People are going to continue to focus on Google because it’s used more than the others, and because if you please Google, you’ll generally please the other engines as well. From a PPC perspective, I firmly believe money is better invested with Yahoo, Ask, or Live because I believe there’s less fraud (competitors click bombing you out of budget) and because you can buy positioning for less money. Google really put the squeeze on folks with their quality score impacting ad prices. Competitive terms are hard to rank for with Google PPC without paying an obscene amount of money.
I kind of agree with this statement but I think we’re obsessed with Google because it’s Google that drives the majority of people to your website. I agree that MSN Live is a nice search engine but it’s user stats just can’t compete with the big G. For now, Google is king.
That is a really good point. Everyone focuses on google search. I have noticed a lot more search traffic from Yahoo lately do you really think they are out of the running?
Well, it still looks like Google is #1, Yahoo #2, and MSN #3. I’m a bit surprised that Microsoft hasn’t yet made a serious in-road to Google - I wish they would - the field would level out and we wouldn’t have to worry about one player deciding what is relevant, what is hip…
Though Google has done a lot for the web, the rumors are always present about its left-leaning politics - recently refusing to run ads critical of MoveOn.org. Regardless of your politics, this is scary to think that much power can be in the hands of a single entity.
Yahoo can only try to catch up, but they will fail because it’s too late for them now. Google has technology, experience and now also has much more money then Yahoo for development.
right now Google is number whether we like it or not. But their lack of transparency could be the main issue in the future. I wouldn’t be surprised if they lost their first place in the next years.
Chuck - “too late”? They said the same thing around the year 1900 about the mail order industry and how it was “too late” to get into it and make any real money. “All the money had already been made”.
Well we know how many billions of dollars has been made in the mail order business since then.
Given the dynamics of the Internet and the fierce sense of “lazier fair” among a lot of internet entrepreneurs, I doubt any company, Google included, is that powerful, that dominate that it can run ship-shod over the 100,000,000 or so people who live, breathe, and shop on the internet.
Google relies on guys like you and me to sponsor and click on those cute AdSense links. If we don’t, they become a has-been very fast. There is just too much money to be made – think trillions – on the internet from here on out for just one company to set the tone.
Believe me, as Google pisses more people off with their selective rankings and political leanings, it is they who will become “less-relevant” and “off-topic”.
Like they say – “Do know evil”. As far as they know…
Doh! “Do no evil”…but maybe “no”was meant to be “know”…
Its hard not to just focus on Google when Google controls the majority of the search traffic. Besides if you work on yahoo, then Google’s ranks go down
That’s my problem
That’s my problem i am too focused on google
I focused on Google because this SE can get more traffic than other, but ways of SEO for Google and other SE not very different - with quality content and strong backlinks your site will in top in all search engines
I’ve been seeing a lot of traffic come in via MSN/Live recently, out doing Google on some days all together! I think when Microsoft rolled out an update for IE7 they made MSN/Live the default search engine for the browser… quite a shrewd move so long as not too many users change it to google again!
I don’t know about MSN, but my Google traffic haven’t seen any changes. Yeah, PR changed, but it’s not related to number of visitors. That’s my experience so far.
PR really has no affect on your rankings, people just need to stop looking at the little green bar.
Google sends me 90% of traffic so it is king. For security I hope Live grows to be the second place contender.
I’m with you marial, I dont want the Google peps, hitting my site and putting me out of buisness.
I still think that the pagerank is the most important thing for searchengine results.
Without a high pagerank, you will never get on the first result page of google.
I don’t think you can focus too much on Google–in addition to the market share, they index your site the fastest which enables the whole system to go. Why bother risking de-optimizing for Google to rank more highly in Yahoo or MSN/Live when they’re so slow to index anything new you have anyway?
I must admit jos, you are completely wrong. PR has absolutely nothing to do with your serps. I know of many sites that are PR 2-3 and are in the top three for extremely competitive keywords.
PR does have something to do with the SERPs.
Google says so.
Google says a lot of things. Google has also hit sites with PR reductions, however did it affect there serps? Answer is NO.
Exactly. Check your stats, do not believe what Google or anyone else says if you can test it.
I am amazed how many people still believe that Google is the ultimate power. We already see it on shaking ground and we already have some pretty important signs that other search engines will take over - maybe not the whole spectrum - google is too powerful - but the search. I am talking about hakia and powerset for a change.
It will be a long time before anyone will actually be able to compete with Google.
First, it always returns the best results when searching for something, mostly on the first page - at least for me.
Never liked Yahoo or MSN, as the results returned where never 100% accurate.
Google has this smart bunch of people that knows what they are doing.
I think that as from next year, the competitors of Google are going to give the best that they can. But still, the advantage of Google is that it had got a good start right from the beginning as compared to those that were on the market before.
There will always be competitor, however Google will always be King. The are on top and nobody is even in there rear-view mirror.
ALL HAIL GOOGLE!
Fear Google if you need PR. Otherwise, forget about it.
Google is an important aspect if you are doing any kind of internet business. You cannot overlook google. As of now google is the king.
I will focusing on Google will it will lider, because I receive 60% of traffic from Google, 30% from Yahoo and 7-8% from MSN.
I think that the focus to get sites well ranked on Google has had a positive effect on web design.
With browsers becoming more unified in their approach to rendering (looking at you IE!) good coding (without hacks) is becoming more viable.
IMO, writing valid, well structured code should be the base for your site. Once this is in place, just add interesting content and keep it up to date.
An example of how this can work in google would be to type ’sheila hudson’ - it’s a cross stitch site me and a a friend knocked up in a day for his mum.
We have never submitted it to a any search engine, but just focused on valid code and (some) content.
It now ranks #1 in pretty much all search engines.
Valid code FTW!
I don’t worry myself about google or any other search engine, I worry about getting targeted traffic that converts well for my users. If I can’t do that, I’ve failed.
At the end of the day they don’t really care if it comes from a search engine or a site listing as long as their bottom line increases.
Most important are unique visitors, everything else is secondary.
Good post and one that I’m sure opened a lot of eyes. I’ve noticed on some of my sites that Yahoo and MSN send more traffic that converts. Google always sends more traffic, but for some reason the traffic from Y and MSN just converts better.
But I’m not about to turn my back on G…:)
If you install one of those real time hit programs you will some interesting results. I know I did. A lot of my traffic comes from other places than google.
I certainly aim all my clients projects at google, I might be wrong but although the other SE’s deliver some traffic my clients always convert better from google. Maybe there’s a trust thing in googling
People focus on Google because that is the most popular search engine. The majority of people search using it so if you are number one on google you are King.
It all just comes down to whether if you put in less effort you can get to the top of other search engines but get more traffic than if you were to put in the same amount of effort to getting top of google.
If that makes sense?
Google got much support from Webmasters community due to their publicly disclosed ‘PageRank’… there would surely be a shift in popularity if Microsoft provides a similar scale for webmasters or Google decides to keep pagerank for themselves.
I have and currently optimize for Google. What I have found though is that by doing so I have done very well in Yahoo and MSN. I use hittail.com as well as Google Analytics to give me direction and we makes slow gains in Google. I wish the advancements we see in Yahoo and Msn would be as fast in Google. Oh well…
We’re all way too focused on Google. Your pagerank is important, yea, but traffic is what counts.
Good point! I use hittail as well as it is surprising how many hits come elsewhere. Google is not the end all.
I am definitely am very focused on Google. But that’s where most of my sales come from.
If you consider certain segments (i.e: Romania) Google leads with 80% of the searches so…
I think Google is just going to keep getting bigger, it will start buying more and more companies out and probably will take over the internet world.
I think most people do focus on Google and probably too much at times. Although I’m a big fan of Google I’d like to utilize Yahoo! and Ask more often. Thanks for a great post!
i myself focus on google. if you play by their rules you will be rewarded with lots of traffic.
Everybody wants Google’s traffic.
I cannot deny that I am totally and utterly focused on Google. PR is of no consequence but in terms of search results it has to be Google that counts.
Interesting enough I am just completing a new website and yahoo is showing it like crazy but not google. First time for me that this has happened. Wonder if yahoo has changed something.
I think that we are focusing too much on Google, and not giving any attention to other search engines.
I guess competition and features means a lot to the patronage.
uncontrollable rising
Thing is, time spending SEOing your site for Google is time well spent. You know what you are getting. You are getting the most visitors for the amount of time you are putting into SEOing your site.
Google is king.
I am focused on Google. Have to admit. It’s the dominant search engine.
Base on my experience, even if it’s not easy to accept but it’s a fact now that google become dominant in search engine competition… so i focused on google, but I also work with other search engine… it’s business and thats life…