It’s true. Google is not the only search engine out there. Nevertheless, search engine optimization professionals spend the lions’ share of their time trying to get their clients websites to rank on Google. And when they’re not doing that, they’re trying to figure out the latest changes and updates to the algorithms Google uses to determine the order in which websites will be listed on the SERPs.
So, why are we SEO professionals so focused on Google? There are countless reasons why Google gets so much attention in terms of optimization. First, they really wrote the book on…well, on the most common practices of all the major search engines. You can almost guarantee that if Google makes a major change to how it determines rank, the other websites will quickly follow suit.
Regardless, of these reasons there is one overriding fact that makes SEO professionals disproportionately focus their efforts on Google. The reason is market share. According to Hitwise, of all the searches done on the Internet in the United States from mid-March to mid-April of 2010, 70.57% of those searches were done using Google. 15.14% of the searches for the same period were performed on Yahoo, while only 9.57% were done on Bing. When people conduct searches on the Internet, they are usually using Google.
That doesn’t mean that you should stop all efforts to rank on Yahoo or Bing. You can spend anywhere from six months to three years trying to rank for common keywords on Google. Rankings on Yahoo and Bing are not necessarily easy to come by, but these sites are definitely less competitive than Google.
Where should you put your energy? Weigh your options. Getting a high ranking on Yahoo or Bing could be just the thing to get your company the exposure it needs while you continue working towards ranking on Google. Think of it this way, there are a few hundred million searches done on the Internet every day. While Yahoo and Bing have a small amount of market share, it’s still one colossal market.
