Budget Your PPC and SEO Dollars
See Which Search Engines Get the Most Traffic.
Some of the top search engine statistics sites include Comscore, Hitwise, and Search Engine Watch, which both agree that the Google network had by far the biggest share of the US search marketplace for the year 2008, and continues to do so for the year 2009. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) firms use this information to allocate client dollars and ensure that sites are properly formatted from an SEO (search engine optimization, or website ranking) standpoint in order to keep up with market share and keep their clients where the traffic is. Since Google feeds AOL Search, and Yahoo feeds Altavista, most stats are considered to be combined among major networks. Even analytics platforms will show different results for MSN, Bing, and Live Search (though these are now not simultaneous) so it is important to know how things stack up. One thing that search engine optimization agencies have noted is that different business verticals get different results, so one field may see a 70% market share for Google searches, while another may only get 55%. This is because demographics like gender, age, and income all are represented differently on search engines, so demographic targeting should also be taken into account.
One of the recent surprises for Bing is that it took market share away from Yahoo! so quickly over the first few weeks of its launch. How long this trend is going to continue is anybody's guess.
Notes and Special Information
Special note: Search engine stats are always open to interpretation. SEO and PPC experts will show different conversion rates from one engine to another, so Google usually gets the most traffic, but it may not have a higher conversion rate than Yahoo! or MSN/Bing. From a marketing standpoint, this may mean that you would want to have a higher relative exposure rate on Yahoo and MSN if you can't afford 100% saturation on all three engines and their various search networks.