In its report of November search traffic, market research firm comScore found that Bing and Yahoo have drawn basically even results, with Yahoo accounting for 15.1 percent of search queries and Bing claiming an even 15 percent. Meanwhile, Google, despite dropping 0.2 percent, still dominates search with 65.4 percent of queries in November.
Bing, Microsoft’s search engine, and Yahoo run the same algorithmic process to produce their results, so the progress of one over the other may not seem like a major shift. However, Bing’s slight progress, a 0.2 percent fain from October, demonstrates Yahoo’s waning popularity as a search tool.
In terms of yearly comparisons, Google has fallen 0.8 percent from November 2010. Still, the company’s aggressive algorithmic shifts that have rolled out since February differentiate it from the other engines. Despite a claim from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer earlier this year that 70 percent of searches on both Bing and Google produce the same results, it’s clear that users are happy with rankings yielded by Google.
For marketers, Google’s dominance in search means that SEO campaigns are typically centered around the company’s search product. Matt Cutts, distinguished engineer at Google, recently provided search marketers with some guidance to achieve success on Google SERPs. Cutts said that building trust is a critical component of success in SEO, Brafton reported. While achieving this can be tricky for some, news content marketing that focuses more on providing quality information than promoting products can build trust with readers and prospects.
