Keeping Track of Search Engines

[King Conga]

This looked like the most logical forum to post this on, so Linda sorry if I got it wrong. I do SOO appreciate your patience. I canI got about 12 "Thank you's" from various search engines that Freewebs set me up with after creating my site. Simple question: Do I need to keep these e-mails so I know which engines I'm on? Again, I think I may have asked a silly question, but...

Tanx,
KC

 

[Larwee]

King Conga, I'm not Linda and this isn't a direct answer to the question that you asked. But I think it might help give you an idea of what you should do with them.

I am not talking about the particluar name that you mentioned or any particular product or service. I guess I'm really talking about all of them.

There are so many out there doing all of this talk about placing people in search engines. Some might promise to put you in dozens or hundreds. Whatever the number happens to be, it really doesn't matter.

Here is the simple truth. All that really matter now are the search engines of Google, Yahoo, MSN and possibly Ask. All of the others added together aren't really worth talking about. I am talking about in the United States.

I have some figures from a few months ago that I'll link to in this post. Things have remained about the same since then.

At that particular time, searches were tracked on the top 57 search engines for a four week period. The top three that I mentioned were responsible for 94.5% of all the searches made during that period. The other 54 combined accounted for only 5.5%.

When it comes to search engines, it is obvious which ones should get the attention, with Google being the big leader.

The bottom line is being listed in a lot of search engines is of very little importance if very few people are even using them to conduct searches. If they aren't being used very much, then obviously they aren't going to bring you much traffic.

You need to concentrate on the major search engines. Those are the ones that are going to bring you traffic.

Here is a link to that report I had handy from a few months ago http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2006/08/us_july_search_volume_numbers.html

Ask.com wasn't mentioned in those numbers however it is number 4, but still is behind the other three. But if you want to, you can include them in the mix and consider the top four search engines since most of that other 5.5% was from Ask.com.

I'm going to give you a link to more recent numbers. Google is still over 60%. But the thing to notice is that if you add Ask.com as number 4 and then consider the top four search engines, they account for over 98% of all searches being conducted. That means that all of the other search engines combined are responsible for less than 2%.

A person can be in dozens of search engines. But the numbers tell the story. It really doesn't matter, because they account for so few of the searches. You need to contrate on the top 3, or the top 4 search engines at the most. Being listed in a lot of search engines might sound good, but in reality it is of almost no importance.

Here are some later figures with information for 4 months. You can see that things are rather constant.

Here is the link http://weblogs.hitwise.com/bill-tancer/2006/09/latest_search_numbers_google_c.html

 

[King Conga]

Thanks Larwee. I kinda figured as much. However, I can't seem to figure or find out what the "Big 4" charge. How should I figure that into my budget, as I know its truly the cost of doing this kind of biz? Again, I don't have a clue. And yet again, thanks for your patience.

Thanks,
KC

 

[Larwee]

They are absolutely FREE. You can buy paid listings. But you can do very well with free listings.

All you need is a website. You can apply to be listed. But they actually like to find you themselves. They will find you and you will be included free. There are no strings attached. If a site that is listed links to you, it will be very easy for them to find you. Every page of your site can even be indexed. Yes, it really is free.

Many people are able to make a living from the traffic they get from these free listings.

While you don't need to submit, you can. Here are links to submit to Google and Yahoo. You don't submit over and over. Yahoo requires you to register in order to submit. Neither will guarantee that you will be listed after you submit. As I said before, the best thing is to let them find you.

http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Being listed is nice. But you want to place well in the search results. That is a little harder and where search engine optimization comes in. However getting indexed doesn't cost a penny.

 

[King Conga]

Tanx Larwee! You Da Man! I haven't had time to check out your links as I've been busy with a Christmas concert I was playing in last night. Will check them out today.

Later,
KC