subject: A Breakdown Of The Search Engines [print this page] It is common in SEO to make suggestions to potential clients to not go after that elusive one word phrase. But by doing so, and with seemingly all SEO professionals on board, has it gotten easier to get ranked for one-word phrases?
Search Engine Breakdown
Ever notice that performing the same search on the major engines gives you different results? Yes, some of it is because of the algorithms and how the engines use different factors in their rankings, but pay attention to the results and a pattern has emerged.
For the sake of being fair, Ask has been included since they do serve up results in a slightly different manner. So here's how the engines shake out:
Google:
Information Engine
Loves Wikipedia and the results show it
Relies heavily on trust
Yahoo:
Social Engine
Many results have ebay listings (a Yahoo partner), del.icio.us (Owned by Yahoo) and Flickr results (Owned by Yahoo)
Tries to incorporate Yahoo Answers into many results
MSN:
Product Engine
Almost always has results for product based searches not found in the other engines
Starting to use more Wikipedia results as their algorithm matures
Ask:
Clustering Engine
Their results try to give you all the surrounding information around your search term
Trying to get into the mindshare of America
So, as you can see, each engine does provide a different slice of information depending on your search need. Keep this in mind when you are not only looking for something, but when selecting the keyphrase you want to be ranked for.
