SEM with Google, Yahoo and MSN
When looking into the current search engines, you’ll find that Google is more than likely the best known name. Not only is it so well known to the public, according to surveys it is by far the biggest player in the search engines market. Surveys show that 70%-80% use Google as their preferred search engine. Coming in second with much less usage is Yahoo, which surveys show is used 10%-20% of the time. Finally, although falling far behind in the race is MSN, which is shown to be used 5%. These statistics are available at MarketShare Website
Although these three are the most well known in search engines, there are also other small players in the market. These engines are those such as AOL and Ask, however because they are not used nearly as much, it isn’t recommended that you spend your time or your money with these sites. Since Google is by far the front runner, this is the most highly recommended domain to focus on. As far as ranks are concerned between the top three, the changes are fairly minor, meaning that no matter which you use your rankings will be about the same.
With that said, there are some World markets that you’ll find Google has to compete with other players in it’s field, and even then the gap is not that great. In China for instance, Google competes closely with Baidu, a local search engine. In the past few years Google has worked hard to deliver localized search results in almost every country around the globe, making it a great competitor.
No matter which search engine you prefer, you’ll find that the common purpose of all different search engines is the same: to bring in more ad revenue by building a loyal audience who feels comfortable with their engines and toolbars. Of course the only way to build this type of audience is to deliver quality results and to keep up with the competition. These search engines actually work together to fight spam sites that don’t deliver any value to the consumer. To find the most recent news on what is allowed and what is considered to be Spam, you can visit the Google Webmaster area at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/ .
While looking to use SEO, strategy will be best if it is based on things that will work across all of the major search engines. Basically what this means is that you’ll want to follow the guidelines and make sure that you don’t go against basic rules. Of course in the end it will be most important that you deliver a quality site that consumers will find useful.
