Building a website without SEO in mind? You might as well direct potential customers straight to your closest competitor’s doorstep. Search engines still deliver the majority of traffic to most web pages, so you need to achieve favourable rankings to get qualified visitors to your site.
All search engines aren’t created equal, however. The latest statistics reveal the popularity of each of the major search engines – and identify which ones you should focus on as you overhaul your SEO strategies.
- Google.com received the lion’s share of online traffic, garnering over 72% in September 2010. Still the big player in this sandbox, Google is the search engine trendsetter to watch.
- In second place, Yahoo received nearly 14% of September’s search engine traffic.
- Bing.com got 10%.
- Ask.com got a little over 2%.
- The other 65 search engines considered received only about 2% of all search engine traffic in the month.
The same statistics, from Experian Hitwise, show that Automotive, Health, Shopping, and Travel are the most popular areas for Google search hits, receiving constant traffic month after month, every year.
The study also considered the length of searches being made:
- Two-word searches are the most common, making up 24% of search engine usage.
- One-word searches made up 23%
- Three-word searches: 20%
- Four-word searches: 14%
- Five words and up: 19%
To maintain a strong web presence and attract the most qualified visitors, keep this information in mind when planning your next SEO implementation.
Posted in SEO / SEM