Image via CrunchBaseI’m not going to argue the ubiquity of Google in the search arena, after all it has become a verb “Why don’t you just Google it”. However the data normally used in calculating “Search Market Share” per Search Engine is based on only one metric. Number of “queries performed” and has resulted in many Internet Marketers ignoring the other opportunities available to drive traffic. They’ve got all their proverbial SEO eggs in 1 Basket and ignore basic business sense.

Ask yourself what would happen to your Internet Marketing business if you no longer got any traffic from Google? How much better would your business be if you were actively pursuing SEO opportunities not only with MSN Live and Yahoo but the other 58 entities in the search arena?

photo credit: basheertome

if we look at some other relevant data!

A metric I’d love to get my hands on and one that would tell the truest story would be the number of “referrals per search engine” made to website destinations but alas that data is not publicly available.

We do have another intriguing data set available and that is “Unique Visitors“. While it in and of itself is also problematic it paints a better overall picture given what data is available.

With 220,000,000 Americans on the Internet in 2008 Google’s publicly estimated 135,000,000 isn’t ¾ + of the U.S. search market share that query based data suggest. Because of automatic and manually based rank checking Google’s market share based upon search query is heavily inflated. Granted the data set is for the U.S. only but it is extremely reveling to say the least.

(Source: Michael Martinez, Visible Technology, December 2008)
Table Reproduced Below:
Skydivedad Publishing is not associated in anyway with Quantcast, Visible Technology or Michael Martinez

October 2008 Algorithmic Search Market Share by Visitors per Quantcast
(data provided in 000`s, rounded down)

1. Google.com (1) 134,700 (135,900) 29.00% (31.00%)
2. Live.com (2) 90,300 (92,700) 19.00% (21.00%)
3. Search.yahoo.com (3) 59,200 (59,000) 13.00% (13.00%)
4. Ask.com (4) 39,200 (42,500) 8.00% (10.00%)
5. Snap.com (5) 33,100 (38,500) 7.00% (9.00%)
6. Nextag.com (7) 43,400 (11,300) 9.00% (3.00%)
7. Searchservice.myspace.comRb (6) 23,000 (23,900) 5.00% (5.00%)
8. Search.aol.com (9) 8,200 (8,300) 2.00% (2.00%)
9. Search.msn.com (8) 8,000 (8,600) 2.00% (2.00%)
10. Dogpile.comMeta (10) 4,800 (4,600) 1.00% (1.00%)
11. Search.mywebsearch.com (11) 4,300 (3,700) 1.00% (1.00%)
12. Info.comMeta (12) 3,900 (3,300) 1.00% (1.00%)
13. Aboutus.org (13) 2,900 (2,800) 1.00% (1.00%)
14. Altavista.comRb (14) 2,000 (2,100) 0.00% (0.00%)
15. Mamma.comMeta (16) 1,700 (1,800) 0.00% (0.00%)
16. Search.cnn.comRb (17) 1,700 (1,600) 0.00% (0.00%)
17. Alexa.com (18) 1,500 (1,500) 0.00% (0.00%)
18. Search.com (18) 1,300 (1,500) 0.00% (0.00%)
19. MySearch.comMeta (20) 1,100 (1,200) 0.00% (0.00%)

Algorithmic search services denoted by an Rb superscript are serving rebranded or co-branded results from one of the major search engines: Google, Live, or Yahoo!.
Algorithmic search services denoted by a Meta superscript are meta-search engines, drawing their results from 2 or more of the major search engines: Ask, Google, Live, or Yahoo! and other services including DMOZ

So much for the Google Monopoly!

I suspect this is a revelation for many Internet Marketers and provides compelling evidence towards steering you away from the Google Centric view of SEO that’s costing you sales! Please don’t confuse the statement. Yes, Google is an extremely important SEO target but why ignore the others?

If you can’t identify the differences between the 4 major search engines and how to apply their specific algorithms in your SEO campaign you need to step back and take the time to learn proper SEO for each of them. It could make you a lot more money.

to be continued…

Tags: Google, Internet marketing, MSN, Search Engine, Search engine optimization, SEO, Web search engine, Yahoo