Everybody
loves lists and statistics. From the annual Top100 movies
of all time lists to the Top10 cities in which to live,
even the simplest comparative studies can captivate people
and inform pop-culture opinions. Folks use lists to prove
points, gauge their own successes and get a reckoning
on what's going on around them.
Our love of lists affects us in both profound and subtle
ways. Today's search engine users have long been conditioned
to believe that the stuff found at or near the top of
a list ranks among the best of whatever vintage is being
examined. After all, it was found at or near the top of
a list that might contain over 1,000,000 other references.
Now, many of those top listings were affected by another
group of people who live for lists and statistics, search
engine marketers.
SEOs and SEMs take great interest in a number of lists
and statistics beyond the Top10 search rankings. One of
the most helpful aspects of working on the Internet is
the ease of compiling and tracking statistical data. It
is relatively simple to find statistics on user numbers
for the major search engines and for unique clients.
There are three types of stats that are relevant to a
specific client. The first two sets are comprised of external
factors and the third set is made up of client specific
factors. The ability to combine information from all three
areas into a coherent plan is arguably the greatest asset
a professional search marketer offers his or her clients.
While the information itself runs from the vague to the
highly detailed, the compilation of all of it can provide
a rich view with a complete background.
When looking at external factors that effect search marketing
planning, statistics tend to fall into two general categories.
The first describes the overall search environment and
search related options available to the client. The second
category describes the search environment in relation
to the sector in which our client works. Internal stats
are compiled with a view to understanding how our marketing
plan is working based on the behaviours of visitors and
search spiders.
The overall search environment changes from time to time.
Knowing who is what and where in the search engine universe
is important to knowing who will view your clients' messages.
Some search engines drive more traffic than others do.
Some appeal to different types of users. Each of the major
search engines has a following though as statistics and
common sense tell us, those who lead sometimes lose their
followers.
Over the past four years, Google has dominated the search
scene. Up until last year, Google fed results to most
other search engines including Yahoo, which fed some results
to MSN. This outward pollination of search results made
Google responsible (directly or indirectly) for over 80%
of search results worldwide. After Yahoo and MSN developed
their own proprietary search tools, Google's influence
dropped to 54% of search results as measured in the May
Nielson NetRatings survey. Following this trend has led
SEOs to start paying more attention to Yahoo and MSN both
of which can deliver significant chunks of search engine
traffic. Search Engine Watch regularly publishes stats
about the major search engines.
All search marketers know there are several search tools
delivering traffic to commercial websites. While Google
is the largest of all, it is important to get placements
across numerous search tools. Though there are hundreds,
if not thousands of search tools working on the web right
now, less than ten of them provide enough traffic to be
considered statistically relevant to SEOs and SEMs.
In the organic listings field, there are four major search
engines and about six minor ones. Google, Yahoo, MSN,
and Ask Jeeves are considered the Big4 as they each have
their own unique spiders and ranking algorithms. Following
the Big4 are, AOL, Lycos, Netscape, AltaVista, FAST, and
Excite. Each of the six smaller search tools mentioned
above has some sort of loyal-user following though they
are not nearly as popular as the Big4. A primary reason
for this is the fact that the six smaller search tools
are actually fed results from one or more of the Big4.
This brings us to another interesting and essential list
for search engine marketers, the Search Engine Relationship
Chart. Search marketers need to know which search engines
feed other search engines in order to know where to focus
their energies for optimal results. One of the more popular
versions of this list is found at the IHelpYou
SEO Forums.
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