Should we be 100% Google?

‘Google it!’ We bet that’s a phrase you’ve heard before and one that you’ve used yourself. Considering Google launched less than 20 years ago, it’s pretty impressive that they’ve embedded themselves quite so deeply into our day-to-day lives. At Click Submit, even if our mother’s or father’s don’t know the answer to a query, they might not use the search engine themselves, but they’ll ask us to ‘Google it’. In fact, it’s practically expected that nowadays you’re to search on Google to find an answer before asking the person stood next to you. So it’s no surprise that when it comes to search market share, Google dominate.

As of March 2015, the search engine market share in the UK displayed as follows:

Google: 88.12%
Bing: 7.09%
Yahoo: 3.61%
Others: 1.18%



*Whatever happened to asking Jeeves, hey?

With the above stats, there’s no wonder why advertisers, marketing professionals, and businesses across the board are so eager to use Google’s services to their advantage, and focus their efforts on gaining a top spot position in the search results for their favoured keywords. Google’s seriously intelligent algorithms and advanced ad programs like AdWords have pushed them to the forefront of all things search. But, and there is a but, should we be putting all of our eggs into one basket? I.e., what about the remaining 11.88% of the market share? It seems like a small percentage, but when you think of the amount of people who use the web world wide, there are still millions using Bing/ Yahoo/ Others.

Bing only launched in 2009 and in a short space of time they have established themselves as a rival to Google, and more importantly, they are growing. Yahoo appointed Bing as it’s exclusive natural and paid search platform in 2009, which means that both engines return the same results. So, it’s worth considering that factor when reviewing the search market shares.

So where do the Bing and Google differ?

First and foremost, the search results they provide differ. This sounds obvious, but for SEO newbies, it might not be. The search results on all engines are calculated using complex algorithms, and even though Bing and Google’s are similar, there are key variants, such as:

Google are certainly more advanced when it comes to interpreting a pages subject/ theme. Bing’s bots don’t address the whole page of a website, which most likely affects the relevancy of the results.

However, Bing’s algorithms seem more capable of recognising pictures, videos, audio and flash. Google’s algorithms focus primarily on HTML/ text based content. So without including text alongside any image or video that appears on your site, they simply won’t be recognised by Google.

It would appear as though Bing’s bots don’t focus so heavily on external backlinks and place more emphasis on social media and internal links with anchor text. We do however; think Google are starting to incorporate social media more heavily into their algorithms.

With all the above differences in mind, there are still a great deal of similarities between all search engines. For example, manipulated links will not be tolerated, duplicate content won’t be recognised but good quality content will be rewarded.

Evidently, Google are like the Jesus of the search engine world, but it’s worth making note of what appeals to it’s disciples, especially as the market share across the pond is more even than in the UK. So, if your businesses services are supplied in the US/ worldwide, or you’re aim is for them to be, this particularly applies to you. comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, released new stats on Wednesday (April 15th 2015) that shows Microsoft’s engine Bing has achieved a 20.1% share of the U.S search market, which is a seriously positive result for them and supports our view to utilize other search engines too.

http://www.comscore.com/esl/Insights/Market-Rankings/comScore-Releases-March-2015-US-Desktop-Search-Engine-Rankings

However, there’s also another network that have always suggested that they will, at some point, move into search; and that’s Facebook.

Facebook Vs. Google

Previously, Mark Zuckerberg claimed that Facebook receives around a billion queries per day, without even trying. Plus, they have over 1 billion active users worldwide. So if they were to/ when they decide to move into the search market, could they pose the biggest threat to Google of all? Check out these stats:

As of December 2014, it was logged that 890 million people log on to Facebook everyday

Five new profiles are created every second

Average time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes

It would be so convenient for active users to query Facebook instead of opening a new tab or leaving the mobile app to search Google. However, when they do decide to launch their own search engine, Zuckerberg will want to make sure that it is ready to compete.

Google haven’t been hugely successful in their attempts to enter the social network market. Google+ in fact, is probably their most public failure to date. So it’ll be interesting to see whether the king of social can develop algorithm’s advanced enough to return accurate results and give Google a run for their money.

Almost a year ago now, Facebook launched their Places Directory, which allows you to search for a city and see if any of your friends are checked-in there, or have visited previously. At the same time you can view information about the city, read hotel and restaurant reviews, view posts and photos. If you’re logged out of your account, you can still access the publicly available information. So, could the introduction of this local form of browsing suggest that Facebook are looking at ways of incorporating search into their social network seamlessly?

They have been triumphant in developing a PPC program that rivals AdWords with enormous reach. And one thing’s for sure, when Facebook does decide to launch their own search engine, businesses and SEO companies will be eager to learn what makes their algorithms happy.

We make sure every corner is covered

When it comes to digital marketing and attempting to satisfy the search engines, we have every corner covered for our clients. Our product offerings include:

Totally white hat, transparent SEO that follows a simple 3 step strategy

A unique social product called Like to Follow, which means all of our client’s can opt in to like and follow one another on their social platforms

A reputation management product called Positivity, which helps you gain good reviews online and allows you to assess your customer’s experience

And, we even have our own mini-search engine called Connect, which allows our clients to purchase from one another and also pursue business relationships

We also offer managed on site changes. So if we find that your site lacks any of the elements we consider the search engine’s algorithms to be looking for, we will update your site to make certain it’s relevant enough to achieve a great rank.

We hope this blog has provided an interesting read and please let us know if you have any questions. Tweet or follow me at Annabelle_CS

Have a great day!
Annabelle