Interesting Bits Of Information

[derekjay]

Hi Guys

I just came across some figures that I thought may be of interest to the internet marketers out there...

Market Share Of The Major Search Engines (June 2010)

Google - Global 84.96%
Yahoo - Global 6.24%
Bing 3.39%
Baidu 3.06%
Ask - Global 0.76%
AOL - Global 0.49%
MSN - Global 0.09%
AltaVista - Global 0.07%
Excite - Global 0.02%
All the Web - Global 0.01%
Lycos - Global 0.01%
Microsoft Live Search

Hmmm... talk about a monopoly I think the South African market is even more Google-friendly than the global one.

Another interesting fact:

I don't have the exact figure, but natural results (ie, not Google Adwords or PPC), get 70-80% of the clicks, whilst PPC gets the remainder. So if, you're using PPC and not doing any SEO work on your site, you are potentially losing out on 80% of the enquiries... Scary stuff.

I guess you could say I'm pushing a point here - SEO is important! If you're wanting to harness the power of internet marketing in SA, you should really consider putting either some time or money (DIY or outsource) into getting your website "SEO Strong".

Anyone else got some tidbits of info, please share with us

[wynn]

Google got where they are because they offered faster searches than everybody else at the time.
the other search engines (cant even remember their names, Aardvark, Microsoft etc.) were pedantic and offered no advantages whereas Google did.
The next new kid that offers more and quicker than Google will rise and on and on!!!

[AndyD]

I still use Dogpile.com once in a while..for no other reason than the name makes me smile :-)

Thanks to the MPIAA et al, Google has started force filtering results so depending what I'm searching for I sometimes use a more focused search engine along with manual search strings.

[Dave A]

Google got where they are because they offered faster searches than everybody else at the time.

not so sure about the fastest - it's been their ability to generate relevant results better than anyone else that has made Google so dominant.

In the spirit of sharing, the top five organic search engine sources of traffic (of a total of 17) here on The Forum SA as reported by Google Analytics:



It's probably reasonably reflective of SA search engine usage as over 80% is SA traffic. I did a year-on-year comparison so that the more analytical among you could pick up trends too.