18.02.2010
Google: is it the only one that matters?
The dominance of Google as the de facto search site is undisputable.
During the past few years it has steadily taken a greater slice of the market until its global share is almost 90%.
Source: marketshare.hitslink.com
Source: statcounter.com
So does this mean you shouldn't bother with Yahoo, bing, Aol etc.
Although Google dominates, things can and will undoubtedly change over time. Microsoft's new bing search engine is gaining some market share from Yahoo for instance. So an SEO professional should work towards high ranking across at least the main search sites, these will include:
- Yahoo
- bing
- AOL
- Ask
- AltaVista
Doing this for Google and Yahoo is also important because they feed other search sites.
Google supplies primary search results to AOL, Ask and Netscape, whilst Yahoo supplies them to Lycos, AltaVista and alltheweb search sites.
bing sits on its own and does not supply to anyone.
So to get the greatest coverage, Google, Yahoo and bing should be the initial targets of an SEO program.
