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
4 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
In today’s marketing climate, it is essential for companies to have a plan that includes SEO. When people search Google or Yahoo, the first several hits that come up on their search are the companies they go to. This doesn’t necessarily translate into sales, but if people never find your site - you have no chance of selling to them. In my opinion, when doing a search, if your site is not on the first page you have already lost, because I don’t think many people go beyond the first page. I think the biggest reason for this is because the list is so long it becomes overwhelming to look beyond that first page. Furthermore, as you move out beyond the first page in a search, the items you get are less and less related to your search. In my opinion it would make sense to concentrate on the big search engines, like Google and Yahoo. Until a lesser search engine can prove themselves it seams to be a waste of time to spend the energy to optimize these search engines. Besides, I think if you can successfully target a Google with a SEO strategy you would find your website would make it to the lesser search engines as well.
One thing to watch for is the emergence of image based search engines. Today’s search engines are all text based. Image based search engines will allow users to search by uploading an image. A site that’s currently employing an image based search technology is like.com. Users can’t upload photos to this site, but they can draw a box around a particular area of an image that already exists on the site and the search based on the color and/or shape of the selected portion of the image.
Check out the article “Visual search portal sees bigger picture for Web users” from the January 26th issue of the Chicago Tribune. It can be found at www.chicagotribune.com
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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