GOOGLE Still Leads in Search Engine Wars
A new report has been issued that discusses the respective shares of the "search" market.
The report, by Com Score, puts GOOGLE well in the lead, with Microsoft and ASK dropping off a bit.
One of the key elements of an integrated marketing program is consideration for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on websites as well as in all "electronic media and mediums"such as online PR (Public Relations) and email marketing.
What do you think about the importance of SEO in the integrated marketing mix? How important is it? Should a marketer ignore MSN and ASK as well as other lesser search engines?
Gene A. Wright
posted by Gene A. Wright @ 12:24 PM
2 Comments:
One of the key elements of an integrated marketing program is consideration for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on websites as well as in all "electronic media and mediums"such as online PR (Public Relations) and email marketing.
What do you think about the importance of SEO in the integrated marketing mix? How important is it? Should a marketer ignore MSN and ASK as well as other lesser search engines?
The little I know about search engine optimization (SEO) …I have learned in class. However, from that limited knowledge I do recognize how important SEO can be as demonstrated by the search for coffee shops – Pewaukee, WI. The in-class example clearly demonstrated how important SEO can be for Dunn Brothers Coffee shop. The fact that a generic search led to a listing for them higher up the search results list has significant implications to reaching a larger customer base. I rarely seem to get past the first 2-3 pages of search results when I am searching on the web. My thought is that this is true for most searches. Therefore, if a firm can get listed higher in the search results they will, by default, have better odds of reaching potential customers.
My thoughts are that a marketer should not ignore lesser search engines in their SEO efforts since combined Yahoo and MS Sites comprise 39.2% of all US searches or 2.6 billion out of a total of 6.7 billion searches. Including the top three search engines covers 86.1% if the search market. From that perspective it would make sense to include all three in a marketers’ SEO plans. I am not familiar with the cost impacts of SEO …depending on the associated costs it may be prudent to scale back the efforts to fit budget limitations. I think another aspect to this is identifying which search engines are most popular with firms’ customers. For example, it may be true that a significant amount of customers use the Ask Network or Time Warner. In that case, it would make sense to focus SEO efforts there. In the vein of building customer relationships it would make sense to know how they use these engines in order to determine a marketing strategy.
Ken D 1-31-07
Search engine optimization is absolutely critical to the marketing mix. I remember an old comic where a computer novice was typing a question into the C:\ prompt on his computer. Today search engines make this possible.
Marketers should not ignore the other search engines. In some respects they are just another channel to add to the marketing mix. Everyone has their preferences and ignoring everyone that doesn’t use Google would be a bad decision.
Tim
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