So is it better to be ranked high in google or yahoo

[ibw13]

Im trying to decide which search engine to target my website to. There are so many people that say make it google friendly and then others say to use yahoo, msn, and other search engines? Any ideas?

Thanks alot

[bobitza]

you should rank well in all the big three

but I reckon Google should be your primary "target"

[cw1865]

You can talk to 100 people and get different answers. My experience has been that I tend to get decent rankings in msn first, yahoo second, and finally followed by google. My strategy has been to target msn and yahoo to get traffic and sales and then if I get google, that's gravy; if not, just make another website. Eventually something is going to stick.

[ibw13]

Wow, thanks for all the feedback

I checked out your sit leather wallets, it looks really good, how much traffic and sales do you get for a site like that? Or is that just one of many you have selling different products?

Thanks again

[bobitza]

You get decent rankings in msn and yahoo, cause it's easier since not everybody is focusing on them. But this kind of answer the question why everybody wants to rank well on Google? ...

[cw1865]

Originally Posted by ibw13

Wow, thanks for all the feedback

I checked out your sit leather wallets, it looks really good, how much traffic and sales do you get for a site like that? Or is that just one of many you have selling different products?

Thanks again

We sell quite a bit. The bottom line equation is very simple, the more eyeballs, the more sales. Over any statistically large enough sample of traffic, the non-Christmas conversion rate is 1.5% for my websites with a noticeably lower conversion rate for leather jackets which are sized; so there is a reluctance to purchase them because they don't know if they fit.

Other industries have different 'typical' conversion rates, some may be higher, some may be lower.

When I first started, I focused on only ONE website and at some point in time I reached a point where no matter what I did, I just couldn't increase the traffic/sales. So now I have a bunch of websites that focus on different aspects of the general industry that I am selling into. Once I started doing that things really began to take off.

This led to the problem that my manual .html site (built with Dreamweaver and a cgi shopping cart) was simply not flexible enough to handle changes, ie. to change a price I would have to edit the .html page and upload the file to the server. To take a product 'out of stock' required physically severing a link. Bottom line is that it wasn't getting done and the percentage of orders that got fulfilled began to drop (ie. I didn't have it but was still advertising it, not good

About 2 years ago I figured I would migrate to a database driven system and the first site to migrate was the leather wallets site which I chose because leather wallets are small ticket items and IF IT DIDN'T WORK, it wouldn't kill me. But it did, and I have been slowly performing the migration since.

Essentially my strategy has been optimization through diversification.

[gwhite]

I get more traffic from a position 3 listing at google, than I do from the same keyword in the 1st position at yahoo.

But I will add to CW1865's comments, it doesn't matter the traffic if your site doesn't convert the traffic into revenue.

[bunkbedking]

I am struggling to get any ranking in yahoo - but am on page 1 for google and getting good clicks and conversion. I am reluctant to change my site as I am not sure what I need to do to improve my position with yahoo without impacting the google postion? Any thoughts?

[halfmexi]

If you just think good content through organic optimization - build that house (website) strong! All of the major engines will rank you, if you don't... it is definitely a problem on your site.

Sometimes I start with better ranking with Yahoo and Google eventually catches up. Sometimes Google gets the new site right away while the others slowly fall in line (MSN always seems to be the slowest for us...).

Build it right and they will (usually) come!

BIL

Building user-friendly sites since 1997

[Seminole386]

I have found my rankings jump all over the place on Google but remain fairly consistant on Yahoo and MSN. My traffic count is about equal from Google and Yahoo and slightly lower on MSN. From what I have read women perfer Yahoo and men prefer Google.

[saxman1973]

As I can understand what most of the people above are saying about ranking well in MSN and Yahoo, but the fact of the matter is that 80% of all search engine traffic comes from Google. Google has taken strides to make it increasingly hard to rank consistantly, I agree, but it's been my experience that the shift is never that big. The worst I have ever experienced is a shift from a lower page 1 ranking (position to a hgh page 2 (position13). The only time that a shift in positioning become a big factor is when you move from a page 1 to a page 2 or a 3 to a 4. Anything greater than that doesn't matter, your rankings suck and you have bigger problems.

To answer you question though, I have found that if you use your <H> tags and have well defined <Title>'s and relevant content, all of this with relevant link building will get you great ranking with Google. Once I have a great Google ranking Yahoo, MSN, and the rest of them all seem to fall into place.

Hope this helps. - L8r - Saxman

[qh4dotcom]

It's easier to rank in Yahoo as there is less competition and the algorithm is not as sophisticated as Google.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by Seminole386

I have found my rankings jump all over the place on Google but remain fairly consistant on Yahoo and MSN. My traffic count is about equal from Google and Yahoo and slightly lower on MSN. From what I have read women perfer Yahoo and men prefer Google.

I've noticed the mentioned gender bias.

Also, there is a $ bias as well; Google customers tend to buy higher priced items, while Yahoo customers buy the lower. One might say that Google customers tend to be more white-collar; Yahoo, blue-collar.

Whether this holds true for all products or not I cannot say.

[ibw13]

Thank you, that is what I am looking for, more traffic, I think I'll aim towards google ranking first

Thanks

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by ibw13

Thank you, that is what I am looking for, more traffic, I think I'll aim towards google ranking first

Thanks

Bear in mind, though, that more traffic does not necessarily result in more conversions.

Which SE will bring more conversions depends on the product or service being offered, the demographics of those who desire such, and the demographics of those who use a given SE.

Only by testing can one determine which SE yields the better results.

[Toni Anicic]

It also depends on what geographic area you would like to target as not all search engines cover all areas of the world. In my Country (Croatia) it is almost impossible to get any traffic from Yahoo or MSN, only google remains.

[datetopia]

Google traffics more users but with the bigger share of the pie comes bigger competition also. Small efforts are almost invisible to Google. Google campaigns for important keywords sometimes show good results after several months of hard work.

[G.Suvorov]

well, it depends.
please read this study - comScore Releases November U.S. Search Engine Rankings

[mattyw]

Well, during several past Christmas seasons, my ordinarily good Google standing seemed to go away, as it also seemed to do with quite a few small website owners. It always came back by the end of January, and after the second such season, we started perceiving it as a way to increase 4th quarter results with Ad Words!

At the same time, Yahoo and MSN didn't drop their rankings, and it gave us here a chance to see just what conversions we were getting from all three. Turned out our sales didn't drop by a whole lot, and those were the smaller sales anyway. In addition, it also turned out that referrals from Yahoo and MSN didn't seem to cause nearly as much trouble or require as much attention.

Just my 2 cents, but after that, I stopped focusing on Google at all in favor of Yahoo and MSN, although we rank well in Google.

Thanks,
M. A. Woodman
webmaster, thinkwedding.com

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by saxman1973

As I can understand what most of the people above are saying about ranking well in MSN and Yahoo, but the fact of the matter is that 80% of all search engine traffic comes from Google.

Where do you get 80%?

Originally Posted by G.Suvorov

well, it depends.
please read this study - comScore Releases November U.S. Search Engine Rankings

Like G.S I rely on comScore to gauge G's share, and in Nov. it was 58.6% ... gets closer to 80% all the time, but still a ways to go ... unless you know another source?

Personally, since the advent of G's larger share, I have targeted Google and let Y and MSN rankings fall where they may. When running PPC campaigns, I have generally had more traffic from G (all other things being equal) though it's always more expensive.

[PaulMycroft]

Originally Posted by ibw13

I'm trying to decide which search engine to target my website to.

You should not be targeting a web site at a search engine. You should be targeting your web site at your customers and let the search engines do their job.

Optimize your site for your visitors first with well-written copy using your strongest keywords in a way that make sense to a human. A search engine does not buy from you.

After you have built your site for your customers, check all the boxes that ALL the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) like such as:

• Title tags under 60 characters, unique to each page
• Meta Description tags in 2 sentences, unique to each page
• Meta keywords tag, unique to each page
• ALT tags, describing the image

You should then evaluate your search engine visibility across many engines in case one changes its algorithm or drops you completely. Your marketing should not be limited to one single online service.

[simonbuxton132]

I also don't understand why an e-commerce site is indexed first on MSN, the Yahoo, and then Google.

Google was the first on our site, and some products appeared on page one within 2 weeks; yet Yahoo and MSN are only just starting to have any reasonable amount of pages.

These are the stats from our control panel (Google is normally much higher, as it has just dumped about 80 pages):
Links from an Internet Search Engine

- Google 41
Windows Live 6
Yahoo! 3

Crawling stats
Robot hits Bandwidth Last Visit
Googlebot 1312+20 16.43 MB 17 Jan 2008 - 06:01
Yahoo Slurp 53+29 648.43 KB 17 Jan 2008 - 03:53
MSNBot-media 40+64 96.47 KB 03 Jan 2008 - 21:34
MSNBot 15+13 92.33 KB 14 Jan 2008 - 11:33
Alexa (IA Archiver) 20+3 218.84 KB 09 Jan 2008 - 10:03
Java (Often spam bot)1 980 Bytes 01 Jan 2008 - 18:49
Netcraft1533 Bytes01 Jan 2008 - 10:52

Quite a difference!

Google also provide very good tools for helping you index the site, yahoo and MSN are poor in comparison.

Also, everyone I know uses Google (even some Microsoft employees use it to search MSDN, despite the mandate to use Live Search internally!)

[davidweb]

Originally Posted by ibw13

Im trying to decide which search engine to target my website to. There are so many people that say make it google friendly and then others say to use yahoo, msn, and other search engines? Any ideas?

Thanks alot

Google is following a monopoly to maximize their revenues through Google Adwords. This is something which is making Google lag behind other search engines like Yahoo, and MSN.

Google became popular because of its latest/accurate results. These days Google is surely aiming to deliver accurate results , but their ranking filters and algorithm can eventually hit back Google like a Boomerang.

They are trying to maximize their Adwords/Adsense revenue, and to enable this they are deliberately holding back ranking of several useful websites. Whenever I have to search for some latest news, free software, free script etc etc, I have to rush immediately to MSN since it delivers latest results. Moreover MSN has emerged as a NO-ENTRY zone for Adult related websites. This will be a major boon for MSN. Their Image search is far much advance than Google

These days even Yahoo is gaining pace over Google by delivering latest results in their search engine. Surely Google has to wake up before it is too late. Their useless filters are making life miserable for genuine websites/forums to score top rankings on Google. Moreover it is making life miserable for search users by restricting their search results.

If you are searching for some new stuff then try searching on MSN. I am sure you wont be dissapointed with results.

Google has a high traffic, but along with that it has higher click fraud rate. Yahoo traffic mostly comes from middle aged guys, who search for very "PRODUCT SPECIFIC KEYPHRASES".

So a less competitive keyword can reap profits on yahoo.

It is best to target all search engines if you are planning to target different users.

[jetskiron]

[quote=davidweb;356355] wrote: Google has a high traffic, but along with that it has higher click fraud rate. Yahoo traffic mostly comes from middle aged guys, who search for very "PRODUCT SPECIFIC KEYPHRASES".


An earlier poster said women prefer Yahoo search. I know my wife does. She is a middle age professional. Tell me more about why you say middle age guys prefer Yahoo. I have always used google. But maybe I should switch to yahoo?

Ron

[ursfehr]

You get decent rankings in msn and yahoo, cause it's easier since not everybody is focusing on them

[G.Suvorov]

Well. read this. Google Sets New High - 66 Percent of U.S. Searches in December 2007

U.S. Category Upstream Traffic from Search Engines and Google - December 2007

[mjtaylor]

Originally Posted by davidweb

Google is following a monopoly to maximize their revenues through Google Adwords. This is something which is making Google lag behind other search engines like Yahoo, and MSN.

Huh? What do you mean by "following a monopoly?" And what do you mean Google is lagging? In what way?

Originally Posted by G.Suvorov

Google Sets New High - 66 Percent of U.S. Searches in December 2007

Quite a significant difference between those number's and comScore's for November. And getting closer to 80% ... one month cannot make all the difference. Either way, Google's dominance of the search market continues to increase.