Jul 29

Written by:
2009/07/29 01:32 PM 

After more than a year of talks,  after Yahoo denied that Microsoft was making a bid, it seems Microsoft has achieved its goal. If reports of an impending deal between the companies prove true, Microsoft will emerge as the clear No. 2 player in search.

The deal gives a big boost to Bing. The combined search market share of Yahoo and Microsoft would approach 30%. That's still far below Google's 65%. But then other sources have Google sitting at 81%, Yahoo at just over 9% and Bing just over 5%. The combined Bing-Yahoo is still nowhere near Google.

Certainly on Integralwebsolutions website Google refers 95% of the organic traffic, while Yahoo and Bing each have a share of 2%. The only other major search engine organic traffic that I get comes from Search.com, in at a minuscule 1%

Check out this article on Search Engine Market Share for June 2009. This data comes from the trends on the “Top Search Engines” as presented at Market share.

What will we call them now Binghoo, BiHoo?

Who’s Best?

The question still remains, which search engine is better? I did a small unscientific test. I searched for the term “Website Design and Development” on all three search engines. I limited my search to South Africa only, because this is a search term closely related to my websites, and my location is of course South Africa.

What I saw was very interesting. On Google I ranked at #2 and on Yahoo at #5, both on the first page. But on Bing I came in at the bottom of page 5. I also noticed that the Bing search results were a lot different as compared to the others.

After reading an article from It-online, Bing bong – your ranking’s gone, it would seem that the Bing algorithm is somewhat different to the others. In the article there is thinking that the Bing Algorithm for South Africa is flawed. “However my early research attempts lead me to believe that the Bing algorithm used for indexing SA websites (local search) has some serious flaws”. If South Africa, Perhaps other places as well?

Wondering which search engine to use, Google or Yahoo or Microsoft’s new search engine Bing? Check out this great in-depth comparison of various features of the 3 search engines. Tom Spring of PC World gives his well-informed opinion on the relative strengths of each. Which one is best for choosing a local restaurant? For online shopping? For driving directions? Find out here.

Can’t Decide?

But perhaps you can’t decide. Maybe you would want to use both. I found a great little utility that allows you to search both Google and Bing (Yahoo). It even includes linked scrolling. Check it out at http://www.bing-vs-google.com.

Still, Google has a large share of the search market. It would stand to reason that if you want to get noticed, or indexed or be found on the internet that you optimise for Google. With Google having 80% of the market you can’t go wrong. I don’t think, any time soon, that it is worthwhile optimising for other search engines. If we optimise for Google and we show up in Bing, MSN, Ask, or Yahoo, that will be a bonus.

This is useful to know, because many SEO professionals will have as part of their sales pitch, a section  submitting to hundreds of Search engines. With the current stats, we see that this exercise is probably not going to be a good Return On Investment. Don’t waste your money submitting to 100 search engines, submit to Google, and perhaps Yahoo and Bing.

What do you think? Do you think Microsoft has the wherewithal to take on Giants Google? or are they just spiting in the wind? Have you done any search comparisons lately? What have your results been? Where you convinced or satisfied? Let us know in the comments below.

Related Reading:

A new Twitter search engine launched by former Microsoft veteran.

Google’s search-by-voice

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Absolute Beginners

 

 

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