That said, and yes, this is a bit outside the norm I’d admit — the newly combined index/algo that runs both BING and Yahoo, is an opportunity waiting to be siezed and this was brought to our own attention from the folks over at Chitika!

What’re we talking about here? Well, as you know most likely already, Google commands (numbers are always in flux and no one can definitively report on any validity here!) about say 70% of the searches done daily, which runs in various online numbers at say something around 3.5 billion a day. That’s the total market size for each and every single search engine and that remember is a daily number!

So, if Google gets say it’s 70% of that 3.5 billion, then that means that Google gets approximately 2.45 billion searches a day. This then leaves about 1 billion or so searches spread out among all the other search engines, of which the BING/Yahoo engine takes approximately 25% — or about 250 million searches a day. Read that? About 250 million searches a day go through the BING/Yahoo index and get reported using their own algo to filter same…and yes, that’s STILL a lot of searches….

Searches it appears that many many many SEO practitioners don’t bother to even optimize for — hence my piece here today and it’s really something to think about, eh!

Chitika reports that from their own network which of course, they monitor closely the following numbers –

That’s  a real  whack of their own network sites that are not optimizing for BING/Yahoo…think about that for a moment….those sites are by default, not even trying to gain traffic from 250 million searches…so what can you take away from this kind of “non-action?”

That they just don’t care. They don’t need the traffic. Their revenues are fine….they ignore new business!

If that sounds like a place that you too, might be in…AND you’d like some new traffic and revenues….then here’s a short list of URLs to go and see what’s involved in adding understanding of  BING/Yahoo optimizations where necessary, to your own sites –

• BING Webmaster Toolbox
• Tim Grice on same with some tips…
• And Rand’s Analysis on this at seomoz is great….

So, what’s prompted this?

The usual online forum rants/queries/povs that show that for the most part there is NO one, definitive set of stats that shows the real truth when it comes to search engine marketshares.

We’ve had a hell of a year, eh, search engine wise. Google has added/modified/messed-things-up with many many new rollouts and then there’s the whoel BING/Yahoo merge and yet for the most part, we’ve NOT seen a single modification in our own analytics when it comes to marketshare for same. Sure, minor variations and some of course are seasonal as some of our clients are big in some seasons, but the real numbers coming to us (them) has remained pretty static. So…your question is, whose marketshare stats do we agree with when comparing our own numbers with the big two out there, Chitika and comScore?

First, comScore, the large global network management firm that keeps it’s own records ie audience measurement on lots of items, but here we’re looking at their se marketshare stats. They release monthly reports and here’s the into to their July 2010 report –

“With the July 2010 qSearch data release, comScore will now be reporting “Explicit Core Search” results alongside its standard “Total Core Search” results in order to provide transparency around the impact of contextually driven searches.”

Note for me here that the recorded Google share is 66% or so, with the Yahoo/Bing totalling about 27%. That’s what they said their qSearch analysis software determined for July 2010.

So….I look at my own analytics for our client rosters and find that those % numbers are NOT close to what we show…we show Google being up at about 77% and the Yahoo/Bing totals at about 14%…so their marketshare numbers and ours — don’t match!

Next, let’s look at Chitika, the  full-service on-line advertising network serving over 3 billion monthly impressions across more than 100,000 websites. Founded by folks who actually worked at a previously big search engine (Lycos), Chitika serves business by providing online advertising…not that we use same in our own SEO campaigns. Here’ s the Chitika July 2010 stats as reported –

“July is over, and we have stats: in looking at the full month’s traffic, Google remains unassailable in its #1 spot although the Microhoo combination of Bing and Yahoo! continues to slowly erode Google’s market share.  Yahoo!’s market share rose 1.22% from June, ending at 6.14% of all traffic sent into the Chitika network, while Bing’s share declined 0.7% to 10.56%.  Google lost just over half a percent, posting a July market share of 80.97%. AOL and Ask continue to jockey for 4th place with 1.22% and 1.12% of the search market, respectively…”

As you can see, they report stats that are drastically different from comScores….which I suppose is what got me interested in the se marketshare topic initially. This firm is involved with over 100,000 sites by being able to analyze that number of websites traffic thru their own network. Searches on the major search engines then come right to them as the HTTP_referrer….and in my mind, there ain’t NO better way to track incomings than using that item.

So, point is, how do these numbers reflect on our own analytics? Close, is my answer…much closer as they have Google pegged at 81% and we show them at 77% — and they show the combined Yahoo/Bing numbers at 17% and we show 14%.  In online stats…that’s about spot-on…IMHO!

So…whose search engine marketshare stats do I prefer — and really to me and my client roster, these are the two most important items to consider… 

• Chitika is closer to our own client roster stats, than the comScore numbers…
• Chitika’s numbers come from their own 100k site network….

So, easy to see why we like Chitika….as they just are closer to our own client analytics numbers. Seems pretty easy, eh?

And Yahoo search is no more….

And the POWERED BY BING tag is now in the yahoo.ca footer too….

Announced just this am by Yahoo here…the skinny on same is pretty concise and brief –

“Today I am happy to share that Bing is powering Yahoo!’s search results in the US and Canada (English only for now, the other languages will come in the weeks and months ahead)…”

The rest of the notice speaks to the adCenter updates and merging of same, and the Yahoo comments ends with the note that the “transition has gone smoothly…” but I wonder? Oh well, at least now there’s really only two search engines that count anymore….

Just wish I and the rest of the SEO world knew exactly what will happen with Yahoo Search Explorer, eh?

Here’ s what you can do to test this out yourownself. Go to www.yahoo.com and insert any kind of keyword link….I used “Hamilton web developer” and then click SEARCH. You will most likely see what I see too….shown here below –

Note the red circled area….ALL yahoo.com searches now have the added “Powered by Bing” footnote….small it’s true, but never the less…it’s there from now on!

Of course, we’re canucks, eh? And that means that we’d also do the exact same search in yahoo.ca….and guess what? Here’s what such a search did just moments ago, for the exact same keyword phrase “Hamilton web developer” –

So…as an empirical search shows you as of today, yahoo.ca is NOT yet powered by BING, eh! Please though, do test this one yourownself, as our GTA based results may be skewed….but so far, we’re NOT a full “powered by” BING search site yet, eh!

Over the past year or so, after talks and deals being made, it was decided that from about mid-year or so in 2010, that the Yahoo search engine results would be supplied by the Bing search engine. We reported much more fully back in February on this here….

And the time it appears is now!

Now according to Yahoo here, this is just getting started, least back in mid July….but here you can go and see tests done by the folks over at ezlocal.com, with some screen shots of various search terms and the “mirroring” of the results for some widely varied keywords….

There’s a whole bunch of terms there to look at, so I won’t repost them here, but a comment near the bottom of that page was intersting, in that it indicates that Yahoo’s data IS influencing Bings results more than the other way which is what I and the rest of the SEO community understood to be the new ‘model’ for these merged results….

Hmmm….that’s interesting, especially in light of a couple of other factors we do know about…like how the Yahoo paid directory will/will not be affected and especially how the LOCAL indexes for both Yahoo and Bing will be reworked too….all of course important for us Canucks with our .ca country codes and geo-targeting, eh!

Watching are we? Still….and with great interest, and you should be too, eh!

And more news on this here too!

• mediapost
• yahoo blog
• ecommerceguide

What do I mean — or rather — what do they mean by that?

“A new study by online ad network Chitika shows that an individual Bing user is worth one and a half individual Google users in value to website owners.The value of an individual user, in this case, is determined by their likelihood to click on a website’s revenue-generating call-to-action – in Chitika’s case, a text ad embedded in the site.  Across the sample of nearly 15 million impressions used for this study, Google users clicked on ads at a rate of 1.09%, while Bing users clicked on ads 1.67% of the time…”

Now what’s that mean to us SEO types and how can we leverage that to our client’s advantage would be the first question that comes to this man’s mind….

And the answer really is quite simple and complex at the same time….here’s that data in a bar graph to show what I mean…and notice any “others” that you’ve not yet thought about too, for optimization <hint hint!!!>

At all search engines, struggle for marketshare exists. Bing (soon along with Yahoo) is now ranked at the #2 in marketshare. Bing is pretty easy to optimize for, is pretty easy to work with their new LOCAL search tools and yes, is actually (we’ve found) to rank for too.

So, think about adding Bing optimizations for your client lists….start here to get their Webmaster tools working…and here for their LOCAL listings….

And rank!