subject: Besides Google, Which Search Engines Matter? [print this page] Besides Google, Which Search Engines Matter?
For many people the answer seems to be a resounding none, but is this a reasonable stance to take? Are these people missing out on a sizable opportunity? This article will address these issues.
Whilst Google dominates the search market (with around 68% market share) there is still a sizable chunk of the search market (approx 32%) that falls outwith Google. The main other search players are as follows
1) Yahoo - around 16% of total search volume still goes through Yahoo.
2) MSN/Windows Live Search/Bing - although only around 10% of total searches go through MSN/Windows Live Search/Bing this amount is growing month on month.
3) AOL - around 3% of the search market
4) ASK - only around 1% of searches now go through ASK.
5) The rest (e.g. My Web, Comcast, Yellow Pages etc) - only comprise 2% of the total search market when combined.
As can be seen from the above figures it is only really MSN/Windows Live Search/Bing and Yahoo that it would appear to be worthwhile expending any effort in optimizing your site for. The rest of the engines only comprise 6% of the market and hence, whilst your site should be listed in these directories, they are not worth specifically optimising for. Perhaps the best approach for this group of engines is to use an automatic search engine submission tool.
One other directory that is worth mentioning, even though it does not appear in the list of top search providers, is DMOZ.org. DMOZ is a human edited directory and provides results to many other engines and directories and therefore it is worth the effort of a manual submission.
