It can often seem, just from the way the SEO community talks about it, that Google is the only search engine worth worrying about when it comes to optimising your site. This is not true. While Google is of major importance, driving around 70% of the traffic that visits most sites, other search engines do have a small effect and it is unwise to overlook their effects on your SEO Rankings.

The competition in the search engine industry is set to heat up over the coming months with the much-advertised launch of Microsoft’s Bing. Will it have a drastic effect on the industry? It is impossible to tell. Other search engines have tried, and failed, to knock Google off its perch. The one thing we can say is that the alliance between Microsoft and Yahoo! over Bing is a definite declaration of war.

As the search engine industry changes, it is important to know who they key players are.

Google:

The major player in the search engine industry, Google famously began on Stanford University servers with an office run out of a garage. Since then, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have become two of the most successful men in the computer industry, winning awards, receiving accolades and making big money and famously introducing ranking based on linking. The search engine giant attempted a deal with Yahoo! in 2008, but officials found that Google already had too much of a market share for the alliance to be fair. The deal may have been an attempt to head off a Microsoft/Yahoo! alliance, which has since occurred.

Yahoo!:

The once-dominant search engine has been struck down by the rise of Google and has struggled to catch up. In July, Yahoo! handled only 19.3% of US web searches, compared to 64.7% handled by Google, with Microsoft trailing behind with 8.9%.

MSN Live Search – now Bing:

Microsoft forged a deal with second most popular search engine Yahoo! for Microsoft’s revamped search engine, Bing, to power Yahoo!. The agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo! may mean that Google has a strong competitor. The agreement has yet to be scrutinised by antitrust officials, but as Google is such a giant in the search engine market the competition is likely to get the nod.
Ask.com and Ask Jeeves: Ask.com has recently reintroduced its mascot Jeeves after dropping him in 2006. Jeeves, styled after the popular PG Wodehouse character, was so popular that even after going missing for three years over 80% of UK residents still identified him with Ask.com. Bringing him back on board is certain to boost the search engine’s popularity. Dan Cobley, senior director for marketing for Google in north and central Europe, worked at Ask Jeeves between 2000 and 2002. ‘Taking “Jeeves” away meant [Ask] lost that and didn’t really gain anything else,’ he told Marketing Profile magazine recently.
AOL Search: AOL has all but disappeared recently, but a recent study of Google’s competitors put AOL in the top 5.

As the world of the internet becomes ever more complicated, the victor in the battle of the search engines is difficult to predict. The likely outcome is for a number of engines to exist in tandem to serve various functions. This makes a site’s search engine optimisation strategy ever more difficult to develop, and it is important to make sure you have the best advice. To discuss your site’s SEO strategy, contact our experts at SEO Consult.

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