Search Engine Use: November, 2005

Super Mod · 02-08-06, 10:54 PM

ShytKicker mentioned this in another thread, but I thought it would be interesting to discuss this diagram and article in this new thread. What do you think about these numbers?

ShytKicker · 02-08-06, 11:59 PM

To tell you the truth, Yahoo isn't too far behind Google. I'm quite surprised. Not to mention Yahoo is not just a search engine, it is an entire portal.

I'm quite dissapointed with the statistics for MSN. They have the best search engine technology to date, they just released their new search engine a few months ago, and what bothers me the most, is that by default, MSN.com is displayed on Internet Explorer, so it would have many visitors.

Yet only 11.4%. Somewhat hard to believe.

Super Mod · 02-09-06, 12:05 AM

What confuses me is that I get 95% of my search engine traffic from Google yet this chart says that Yahoo has 24% of the market and Google has only twice as much at 46%. How is this possible?

stef686 · 02-09-06, 06:12 AM

That is very weird! I can't believe that google has under 50%!

**Avix** · 02-09-06, 07:08 AM

The problem with yahoo and msn is that they have their search box surrounded by loads of other junk.

if you go to Google the search box is the most prominent thing on the page, with only a few other buttons.

ShytKicker · 02-09-06, 07:53 AM

Well Google, Yahoo, and MSN don't have the same search technology, therefore you won't be ranked the same on all three. So you may have a different number of referers from each. For example, one of my sites gets the most traffic from Yahoo, because my page is ranked #4 for a keyword, yet on Google it is #6. And I almost get double the traffic from Yahoo than from Google.

I knew people that had most of their traffic from AOL. And there are many that get most of it from MSN as well.

stef686 · 02-09-06, 09:11 AM

Google still brings me the highest % even though I am ranked #1 or #2 for the same keywords on yahoo and msn - yet on google I'm down on page 3.

st@rsky · 02-09-06, 09:12 AM

Surprised at MSN's lack of Market Share..

Super Mod · 02-09-06, 11:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShytKicker

For example, one of my sites gets the most traffic from Yahoo, because my page is ranked #4 for a keyword, yet on Google it is #6. And I almost get double the traffic from Yahoo than from Google.

That's a great example that didn't really cross my mind. You're right that it does matter what keywords that I rank for, but at the same time it seems as if my websites never rank high in Yahoo or MSN. I wonder why that is.

ShytKicker · 02-09-06, 02:02 PM

Different algorythms. Ranking high on MSN is probably the easiest out of all the 3 major search engines. Their index is updated every single day for almost every single website.

But MSN looks at different things, for example, MSN puts 85% weight on the URL. Therefore, if your site domain is "xboxgames.com" and you search "Xbox Games", then you are probably going to be very close to the top results. Google on the other hand focuses on link building and puts alot less weight on keywords within the URL.