Focus on major search engines

[Martin]

It is said by many that the amount of traffic that a website hosting gets from Google is always more than other search engines.
So is it good to simply focus on Google only or one should focus on Yahoo and Msn and try to improve the website hosting’s rankings in them as well?

[rich]

Hello Martin, the major amount of share by search engine is captured undoubtedly by Google at present which takes around 40% of the total which is a huge amount but there are people around the world who also use Yahoo and MSN and rely on its search results. I would suggest you to concentrate on Google rankings for which you have to follow their terms and conditions but at the same time don’t ignore the other majors as they are also important to get you a good amount of traffic anytime. Lately even Yahoo and MSN are implementing steps to improve their engines and their popularity among the masses so one cannot predict as till what time Google is going to be at the peak.

[Peter]

Although many people optimize their website hostings for top rankings in Google but I think it's also important to concentrate on other two major search engines i.e Yahoo and MSN to increase the traffic and ensure maximum benefits for your website hosting from search engines. So my verdict is concentrate on all the three for maximum benefits.

[harry]

Google is the most preferred search engine and gives lot of traffic, but just huge traffic is not sufficient for any business to grow,
it should be targeted traffic and should have high conversion ratio ie visitors should be converted to customers.

Many webmasters says traffic from yahoo has high conversion ratio, so it would be beneficial if you also work hard for getting better position in yahoo.
I hope some of you will share their opinion.

[Danny M]

IMO the website hosting should be optimized for all the major search engines. One cannot just rely on a particular search engine as people use different search engines based on their requirements.
A good search engine optimizer should be able to rank well on all major search engines.
The strategies used by the major search engines differ and gradually with research and study you will be able to figure out what is best for you.

[paul]

I agree with Peter 1000%.

[Jack]

Although google has 40% of share, we cannot completely rely on google only. Yahoo and MSN are also emerging as very useful and handy search engine with lots of database available. So it will better to optimise a website hosting for all the search engines which will definitely help you to increase your business as well as your rankings in all the search engines.

[Peter]

Hi Jack, just curious to know, do you have the source which says that Google has a 40% market share? Also can do you have any information on the market share of Yahoo and MSN?

I think the market share of Google would be more than 40 as many people searching for something use Google than any other search engine.

[sanderson]

It was some time back that Google had more than 65% market share. But because of it's complicated algorithms many of the website hostings don't appear in Google but in Yahoo and MSN. So now most of the traffic is diverted towards these other search engines. Eventually the traffic from Google is decreasing bit by bit. It will not be surprising to see if it is 40% today, as written by Jack. I am also interested to know the details. Anybody has more info on this?

[Danny M]

These are the figures for US only
Google's share of search for the U.S. market increased in October to 45.4 percent, from 45.1 percent in September, according to comScore. Yahoo has 28.2 percent, followed by Microsoft with 11.7 percent.