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Study confirms importance of other search
engines
A recent study of Nielsen/NetRatings revealed that a minority
of searchers exclusively use only one of the top three search
engines Google, Yahoo and MSN Search.
Which search engines do web surfers use?
According to the study, 58 percent of Google searchers also
visited at least one of the other top two search engines,
MSN Search and Yahoo, showing that even though Google's market
share is dominant today, there is significant opportunity
for its competitors to grow their share.
The use of multiple search engines is not limited to Google's
searchers. Nearly 71 percent of those who searched at Yahoo
also visited at least one of the other top two search engines,
and 70 percent of those who searched at MSN also tried their
luck at one or both of the other two.
"While it shouldn't surprise anyone that Google
is the search engine to beat, it is critical that all of the
major search players, including Google, recognize that they
exclusively own only a minority of their users," said
Ken Cassar, director, strategic analysis, Nielsen/NetRatings.
"This highlights an opportunity and a threat to
all of the established players in the market, and underscores
the importance of continued innovation in a highly competitive
market that is anything but mature."
What does this mean to you and your web site?
We have mentioned it before in this newsletter: don't focus
on a single search engine. To get best results, optimize your
web site for all the top three search engines.
Optimize
some of your web pages for Google, some for Yahoo and some
for MSN Search. Both Yahoo and MSN Search have so many visitors
that they can drive a considerable amount of traffic to your
web site.
While everybody else concentrates on Google, it's much easier
to get targeted visitors from the other two big search engines.
Google is an important search engine but others are quickly
catching up. If you optimize
your web pages for more than one search engine, you will get
targeted traffic from many sites. In addition, you are less
dependent from a single source which is important if your
rankings drop on one search engine.
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