Remember There Are Other Search Engines Besides Google!
February 7, 2008 Posted by Jay a.k.a. Dat
When people think of search engines, Google is probably the first one that comes to mind. But you also have to remember that Google is not the only search engine that can help you with traffic!
If you’re like me, I’m sure you use Google on a daily basis. Matter of fact, Google search engines are so popular that people don’t say “Hey, go look for that thing in search engines,” they simply say “Just go Google it” and people know exactly what they’re talking about.
You can obviously see how big Google is when people refer “looking something up in search engines” as “Google it.” Personally, I don’t hear too many people saying, “Hey, can you go Time Warner it for the answer?”
But guess what? People do! Maybe not exactly stating that particular phrase or anything that resembles that statement, but people still do use Time Warner search engines to look up things.
Okay, it’s understandable that Google makes up of 58 percent of searches which equals about 5.6 billion ‘core searches’ (According to comScore reports of December 2007) but there are plenty of other search engines that can help you with traffic and SEO.
Please look at comScore reports of December 2007 below:
As you can see, the examples I gave with Time Warner Network doesn’t rank too high. It only makes up of 4.6 percent of all generic searches which excludes mapping, local directory and user-generated video sites. But even if it’s only 4.6 percent of all ‘core searches’ that is still fairly good.
Just think about it. If 58 percent of searches for Google are equivalent to 5.6 billion, then 4.6 percent is equaled to 784 million (I think I did the math right?). On top of Time Warner, you also have Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask search engines rounding out the top 5.
I know we’re all just little fishes in a big pond, but don’t think you cannot get traffic from other search engines besides Google.
Obviously, Google is the big shot and I doubt you want to insult them in any serious ways, especially given the fact that they are the majority with that 58 percent. But besides the top 5, there are tons of smaller search engines that can give you traffic that’s just as good as Google. Of course, that can also depend on your site’s content and quite possibly the location where the source is.
For instance, in the month of December 2007, Americans conducted 9.6 billion searches at the ‘core search engines’ which was actually a decrease from the previous month. It was officially a 3.9 percent decrease from the month of November 2007.
According to comScore’s reasoning, they based the slight decrease of American searches on traveling and spending time away from home for the holidays.
If Americans conducted 9.6 billion – yes, billions – then imagine what other countries are doing and how often they are searching for potential keywords that will lead them straight to your site!
So overall, no matter what you blog about, or what kind of site you have, there are other options for traffic and indexing besides Google’s search engine.
About the Guest Poster: Jay is a Northeastern University graduate who studied Journalism and Communications. He is currently blogging to help the Blogosphere at DatMoney.com and creating custom banner designs.
I’m very enjoy to read this content.
Thank you for good information
I ‘m coming back to read more content.
It is true there are others, but the main problem is they have very little marketshare with the exception of Yahoo.
yea exactly. I hear wikipedia is coming out with an SE… i wonder how well that will do lol.
The market share might be small but if it is a targeted reader, it will do the magic as well.
eh.. we’ll see. I still don’t know anyone who would use wiki search over google. the only way to make it work is if they integrate their normal article search with the se search.
Jbiggs and web 2.0,
Thank you for taking the time to read my guest post and commenting.
Web 2.0, that is the main problem, though, I was trying to emphasize the point that traffic can come from other search engines besides Google.
Take for an example, when you type in “make money online” in Google compared to any other search engine, you’ll get completely different results. It’s just unfortunate that Google has become so big that many people rely strictly on that.
Jay
DatMoney.com
Clearly you needed an entire page to explain what the title and graphic did in ten seconds.
Your “emphasis” was nothing more than some shitty reiteration of the same thing over and over.
You can use other search engines!
You can use other search engines!
You can use other search engines!
uhhhh this post was totally pointless.
You want to know what I find the funniest, even after reading your post? The first thing that came to my mind was, ‘You know, I don’t care about the underdog in this case… I still want to work for Google!’
I’m usually the type of person who would immediately get turned off by something if it was so popular that it’s got such a majority stake in the market. But in Google’s case, I don’t know why. I just don’t seem to give a damn.
Oh and ‘wtf’ you really shouldn’t bash someone’s post just because you have nothing of value to offer yourself.
I have to agree with wtf above me. This post was pretty pointless.
Title says it all, then you go into some detail which could be easily explained and gleamed from a single glance at the chart, and then you end by reiterating the same point as the title.
If this one point were part of a list of other points in a post concerning search engines, then it would have actually been useful.
AOL (time warner) uses Google for its searches. So, sure that traffic is coming from a Time Warner site, but it’s still a Google search.
Meh post…
What’s with the small font! My eyes can’t handle it!
This post should have gone a bit more in depth…
Hi, it’s interesting how the “Google hype” is everywhere. There’s a misleading data in your table I think, and it is that Yahoo searches are now partly powered by Google, which leads even more % to Google.
Let’s face it… Google = World Domination (for now)
(BTW Tyler something happened to the font, it’s in Times New Roman! :P)
They aren’t completely dominating… yet!
Wow, very insightful. I know Google has a large part of the market, but even Baskin Robbins has competitors like Ben & Jerrys. Cross-marketing is important.
wow 20%+ from yahoo? I woulda thought they bring in like 5% of traffic.
Great post Tyler!
-Mike
OOOPs, I deeply am sorry for making this mistake. I must be blind, but I didn’t notice that this was a guest post. I’m sorry Jay!
-Mike
Surely it’s irrelevant how much market share Google has. Shouldn’t we all as webmasters just be trying to improve our SEO in general? Sure, when I think of a search engine to use I’ll use Google, but when improving my websites SEO I just follow what I know works, I don’t think about specifically targeting Google.
Ummmm retarded post. There are two sites (uberaffiliate.com and zacjohnson.com) that have covered this topic lately, and did a way better job. I agree with a few commenters saying that the writer blew his entire load in the title.
If I were you Tyler I would be doing a better job of who you let guest post.
I guess its content so thats a change. 90% of your post in 2008 have been blog recap, retarded reviews and complete nonsense. Im sure its only a matter of time that you are going to do one of those STUPID I cant work 40 hours a week case studies……..POINTLESS AS F*CK A couple more weeks and this blog is getting dumped off my rss. heh
Lol its funny how you people thing tyler cruz actually knows anything about the internet.
His blog content blows, all he does is answer emails and sell advertising spaces on his website. if you honestly subscribed to his RSS….
well lets just say your as dumb as tyler cruz
I gotta agree with the above comments.
You are
Talk more about your web developing acivities, what programs do you use, how and when did you start to get connections, where are the pitfalls, some simple tutorials (about anything your think it’s revelant)…
You aren’t John Chow buddy. If you want to take this blog to a whole new stage, you need to bring your A game.
Hit the add comment to soon…
Also, the guests blogs are pretty crappy. The only people who praise them either:
a)are lying because they want the link love and make you think they are nice ppl
b) are complete newbies, which I bet they are a minority on this blog.
Yeah I did a lil research and during 2008 there were 24 posts and only 4 were actually somewhat beneficial to the reader(a retarded one). To elaborate on the guest posts….I would say that generally the guest posters change the wording around on whatever is popular that week.
It is probably Tyler’s way of bringing that “content” to his site without being flamed for writing it himself.
Tylercruz.com sucks my dick. I only added you to the rss for the possibility that you might have content once in 4months. But my initial impression precedes me as I was right…..
You might as well sell text links because your PR will drop anyway because of lack of anything resoruceful.
resourceful*
[...] not many people know this but I have guest posted on other peoples’ blogs and I recently posted at TylerCruz.com and damn, I thought my post was pretty decent but people are harsh LOL… but I don’t care because [...]
Accck, Spring has sprung wid its annual gaggle of boring pissy critics. BTW, how about some attention to Movie Vault, Tylo? Wheres Nut the Fluck & new movie reviews?
ouch. This one hurts.
If your looking for some posting ideas.
1. How to start off a forum. Organizing, promoting, ect.
2. Maybe how to optimize for other search engines. I do well with google, but i am ranked much further down in serps on other search engines.
3. Thats all i have for now.
I’m not saying i disagree with some of the comments above, as i think there should be more informational posts here. I am just saying instead of being little kids and just talking shit, give some constructive criticism, Post ideas, ect.
We shouldn’t have to give him constructive criticism. He’s the one who is supposed to be coming up with ideas, not us.
He used to have some actual content and for the last six months nothing. Constructive criticism would be that he needs to stop pumping out shit
the dude is trash hes RSS numbers are for the most part fake, he adds new RSS emails every time it sinks. You really think that many people would subscribe to this crappy blog?
Man, this article blows…
Wow.. Theres more search engines other then google?
How about telling us the differences of each search engine? And how to rank well in each of them. This post was the most pointless post I have ever read..
Good advice…here’s another tip, submit your blog to the Yahoo Directory for $299 per year…trust me it is worth it…it jumped my PR 2 full points OVERNIGHT! hardly any bloggers do it, but if its good enough for Shoemoney, its good enough for me!
I believe that winning Google’s heart is all you need to boost traffic to your site. My experience tells me that whenever I optimize a site for Google, other search engines would love to place my sites on top of their search results.
I don’t know about Google, maybe if they made things a bit easier for people to understand it would not be so bad. What I hate about them is there way of trying to control the net. Punishing sites and there ranks.
In addition to the US we have the rest of the world. I posted an article about the Baidu and Yandex (China and Russia) search engines. Huge markets over there and it seems that countries like China randomly ban companies like Google. World domination? Hardly.
Man google has a big share of the traffic. I saw this rasof software that’s suppose to make you rank high in google. Anyone know if it works?
Google is the best search engine for me. SO nothing to say.
Imagine if we knew the percentages of the thousands upon thousands of other serach engines outside thee top 5. Google is not God after all.
[...] Cruz of Tylercruz.com when his account got hacked into. Of course, it was one of the days where I guest posted so my post was deleted. Luckily, I was smarter back then and had a backup on my Word [...]