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 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…
I’m sure, google is the best search engine. But in my country (Russia), it is not so popular, like yandex, etc..
As long as Google is the search engine that is no.1 on top of users preferences, everyone should focus on Google.
However, focusing on getting a high PR is a waste of time because you can rank no. 1 on Google even with low PR pages. People should look for traffic not for high PR. Traffic = sales, high PR = ?
Sure, there is one exception: when you want to sell links, people will pay you more if your blog has a higher PR.
Im using google and yahoo but i find google more faster than yahoo.
Everybody want traffic from Google
yeah, everybody wants free traffic from Google, but very few know how to get it
Recently I have started to see an increase in the amount of msn,live searches in our analytic accounts. Nothing compared to Google but they are their.
From what I’ve heard Live.com is amazingly easy to rank in … but theres a bunch of junk ranking so it’s losing its credibility!
Google is first in search-engines and it is only logical to optimize for google first. I have no problem with that.
What bothers me more is Google Adwords. Keyword-Prizes are climbing every week because everyone uses Google Adwords. There is just not enough possible “real estate” for all those keyword-buyers.
It would be better (and cheaper) if this market would be more segmented.
A lot of water has flown down the Potomac since this post appeared. SEO obsession is no longer the fashion!
I guess this is true. Last few weeks I’ve been getting a lot of traffic from yahoo.
For now they are the search engines that bring the most business so thats who we will optimise for and invariably if we do well with Google we will do well for most of them as they all rely on site, content and authority.
Yeah, everybody want traffic from Google .
Never be too focused on Google
Google is so big right now and the traffic is much much better than any of the other search engines. I checked out powerset and it isn’t even that great… Google will reign supreme for decades! They have so many foreign sites too.
I think being google centric is our generation’s problem
I actually rank higher in yahoo than google, have a stack of #1 spots – and get next to no traffic form them
i was one of those people who just didnt understand peoples obsession with google.
Now things have changed, i am completely focused on google and getting that top spot to bring in some decent traffic.
I wish msn had the traffic level that Google has, because I seem to rank well on msn alot better than the other search engines, maybe because its just easier? hehe
Till then,
Jean
I use Google because it is still the best search engine for me. I need it for my work and fun. And I will probably keep on using it when I start my business. Let me see the fact in the future.
Yeah Google still is the king in the search engine.
Many new search engine try to move forward of the search engine. But always google is the winner.
Bing is fairly heavy competition but Google is still king and Microsoft will always moan in the background but basically using very similar layouts as Google wont make them better!
google is still lead for this competitions
for 5 years from now, i thinks google will be grow 2 times from now
as you said. Google is still king of web and search. so the result is kindly normal.