Search Engine Wars
Everyone seems obsessed with Google and I think that google has pulled off the public relations scam of the century. Not really on purpose, but it happens anyway. According to which source you look at on the web, google has either 60%, 55%, 50%, or 47% of all searches on the web. As a result most people focus all of their time and energy on google.
Well, let’s examine that for a moment. Let’s say 55% of all searches just for argument sake.
Number of searches does not equal number of people.
1. Not everyone finds what they are looking for by going to a search engine. Estimates range from 60-80% of people use search engines to find what they want.
Using the higher 80% figure now google has 55% of the 80% of the people that use the search engines to find what they need. That equals 44% for google now if we count all users.
2. Oops. There is another little glitch on that. How many searches do you perform daily? All the measurements that are being done out there are on number of searches, not number of people. I do around 30-40 searches per day, far above what I imagine the average will be. So again, number of searches does not equal number of potential buyers for your product.
Who uses these search engines anyway?
Well, it has been shown that most people who buy products on the web are not the more tech savvy group, but shoppers who want to find a bargain.
1. New Computers come with MSN as their home page.
2. These newer users do not know how to change their home page and it says “search” right there, so they search from there.
3. These people also likley don’t search more than say twice per day at a maximum.
4. They might visit yahoo and sign up, then there homepage becomes yahoo. The same number of searches and reasons for the searches applies as it did with MSN.
5. Millions of people sign up initially with AOL because they don’t know any better. They use AOL search because AOL does it’s level best to convince it’s users that only AOL is safe, Only AOL is good, AOL will, protect your purchases, AOL will protect you from the evil spammers, etc. These new users believe them.
Let’s talk about the more web-savvy group of users and those who do web design, seo, research, etc. all the time.
1. These users do not spend less overall, but tend to make purchases that are related to their web business.
2. These users search multiple times per day as I do.
3. These users know about and use google more than new users by a wide margin.
What does this tell us?
1. Google has more searches than the other two search major search engines, but not necessarily more people because each person using google does more searches.
2. People who use the web for shopping are likely to use MSN, Yahoo, or AOL.
If you are selling services and products to people who make at least part of their living on the web then you really need to rank high in google.
If you are selling products to people shopping then maybe you should spend more time getting ranked higher with MSN, Yahoo, and AOL. The traffic converts better has been my experience.
Look at who your target audience is and figure out where they are and appeal to them there. If you target less web-savvy searchers then spending all of your waking hours to get google to notice you will not necessarily equal more sales.
Also don’t forget those other 20% or so of people who find what they are looking for in other ways. Get listed in directories and other locations that people visit.
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