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Yahoo! MSN, Who The Hell Are They?

johnchow.com — A webmaster's look at the dominance of the Google search engine. Nelson/NetRating says Google owns 50% of all searches, but I've yet to a see a site where Google accounts for less than 80% of all search traffic. Is Nelson/NetRating full of it, or does our sites just don't attract other search engines?

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  • MrSolutions, on 10/12/2007, -5/+7Generally the sites I've seen get traffic from mostly from Google.

    Its importantto remember that each SE has different algorithms so one site might get favored by one search engine and not be liked much by another.

    A simple example is that Googleis more fussy about new sites and linkbacks from new sites than MSN. So a new site might do much better in MSN than Google for quite a while.

    Also I wouldn't underestimate the competition Google has. There isa sweet table in this article sumarizing the size of each of the companies:
    http://digg.com/tech_deals/Which_Internet_Company_will_Take_Over_TiVo_to_get_in_your_Living_Room/who

    Google has strong competition.
    • Winters, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9I just want to put in my 2c and say this is pretty much what my stats look like. It's hard to take Yahoo & MSN seriously when you look at your log files.

      Even harder to swallow the "serious competition" pill and other marketing PR BS. They're not even in the running.
    • SundayTrain, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6In "The Island", the information directory was MSN....
      yeah right!
    • blizzwatch, on 10/12/2007, -13/+6Google has already said the way their search code works gives preference to blogs. So it would makes sense that Google is referring more people to blogs than MSN or Yahoo!, and still only accounts for 50ish percent of search traffic. Marked inaccurate.
    • r2d7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4It depends on the site and how the different search engines rank it. These are pie graphs of the search engines hitting two of my sites. Both get approximately the same amount of traffic from search engines.

      http://quick.imgfree.net/127916 puts MSN and Yahoo! higher for the first site
      http://quick.imgfree.net/127917 puts Google higher for the second site

      @blizzwatch - I think you'll find google doesn't favour blogs over other sites for the simple fact that most blogs are lame *****.
    • dolemite5005, on 10/12/2007, -10/+3So a tech blog gets most of it's hits from Google. Wow, what a surprise. I also bet Martha Stewart's blog (if there is such a thing) gets most of it's hits from MSN.

      Buried as lamestyle.
  • philoponia, on 10/12/2007, -11/+4yahoo does much better with like blogs and stuff. Actually beating google.
  • ayeroxor, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13"or does our sites just don't attract other search engines?"

    GW? Is that you?
    • Valthonis, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Is our children learnin'?
      - GWB, Jan. 11, 2000.

      Yeah, sounds like 'em.
    • alphacorvus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7It can't be. There's no mention of "the Google" or "Internets."
    • chaimpot0k, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4"or does our sites just don't attract other search engines?"

      What the ***** does this mean
    • Dragular, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Man... I'm normally very anti-grammar nazi, but it took me a good five seconds to wrap my head around that sentence.
    • Vindstille, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1>>"or does our sites just don't attract other search engines?"
      >What the ***** does this mean"

      It means that the site comes much higher on the search result page on Google, than on other search engines. And therefore get more clicks from Google, than other search engines.
  • patience, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Have you thought that maybe people who use these different search engines may not be visiting your site.

    Just because none of your customers drive 2006 BMWs or Mercedes does not mean no one in your town drives a 2006 BMW or Mercedes.

    The fact that your store is a barbecue/liquor store/Chinese carryout in the seediest part of town may be a factor.
  • geofffox, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Here are my October stats as reported by AWSSTATS:

    Links from an Internet Search Engine - Full list
    - Google (Images) 18055
    - Google 6286
    - Yahoo 1552
    - Unknown search engines 123
    - MSN 87
    - AOL 85
    - AltaVista 72
    - Ask Jeeves 63
    - Dogpile 29
    - Netscape 25
    - Earth Link 14
    - Excite 7
    • macxprt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Looks like people are leeching images from your site. What's your URL? I would like to take a little look for myself....
    • n0yd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Not sure if it's the same Geoff Fox,but we have a Geoff Fox here in CT, he a weatherman for a local news station. Here's his site. http://www.geofffox.com
    • geofffox, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No - it's not image leeching. These are search results. There are a few images searches where I get nice positioning,
  • AlwaysDuggDown, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5It's because a higher % of people who use Yahoo and MSN click on ads, because Yahoo and MSN totally sell their search results pages out to ads. So yes, only 50% are using Google, but probably 80% of clicks to natural results are going through Google, while Yahoo and MSN send traffic not to blogs, but to the highest bidder.

    That is why non-corporate sites get a much higher % from Google.
  • dognose, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3one of my sites is banned in google, so it gets 0 traffic from the big G.

    another site of mine is banned from yahoo, so it gets 0 from Y!

    For the site with out any bannation:
    google 85%:
    Yahoo 10%
    MSN 5%
    • ogre2112, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1How did you get banned? just curious.
  • SirChaos, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4@ Crest444

    That's "Nielsen/NetRatings", not Nelson.

    Sorry, I work for Nielsen, I just want to see it spelled correctly.
    • Royal0rleans, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Yeah, it's my last name, people NEVER spell it correctly.
    • scottschiller, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1You work for Nelson? ;)

      I work for Yahoo! (with the ! at the end, which people always forget too.) Too bad we didn't have more boring, easier-to-spell/remember names. ;)
  • noodlez, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5yahoo and MSN are used primarily by non-tech savvy people, which are indeed a majority, but they use the engines less, and can't parse the results well. people who search with MSN aren't going to be searching up and heading to johnchow.com, they're going to be headed to bettycrocker.com or something equally silly because they can't remember what the web address is.
  • mlkmnz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+9Am I the only one who wouldn't be upset if I never had to visit John Chow's site ever again?

    Seems like every week he tries to promote one of his "articles" which seem to be nothing other than spurilous *****.

    Give it up dude, your shameless self promoting is getting old. Go back to being a "dot com mogul" or "super-awesome tychoon" or whatever you want to call youself.
    • jsp123, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2Nah, I find his articles quite entertaining...
    • EuroStud, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3If you don't like it, just don't read it. Doh!
    • f00xx0riz3r, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I agree, he's so totally full of himself. I'd love a way to filter him out on digg. He only writes nonsense everyone knew since the beginning of time anyway.
    • canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5i'm with you mlkmnz. this guy is garbage. if you look at patience's comment above, it will explain precisely why this article is a piece of crap. as is everything else from chow's site that gets submitted here.

      maybe i'll go ask all my friends on myspace to sign up and automatically digg my inane blog postings. front page, here i come!
    • sublimed, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This guy posts every blog he writes and every single one makes it to the front page of DIGG.... Nothing special is in any of them, but hey I gotta give the guy credit... He's making $1,000+ per month for less than 30mins of work a day on his blog and half of DIGG doesn't see that. His next blog should be on using DIGG for profit.
    • mianos, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@sublimed
      I'll give you a hint, look at the list of diggers in his less popular articles. Like webtech and others, all their stories are dugg by 20 of the same members first.
    • mianos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I wish I had screen shot of this thread. Someone went and subtracted two diggs from every item. No gaming here .. not not. :)
  • drjekelmrhyde, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0I have never searched MSN didnt know they had a search till about 3 months ago I always use Yahoo then Google if I cant find it on Yahoo Google sometimes have a overload of junk before I get to the right link
  • andergriff, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1"...or does our sites just don't attract other search engines?"

    Where in hell did you go to school, child?
  • waynechng, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Go to Google and search for "www" ... Interestingly, the first result is Yahoo!
  • prockcore, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I work for a daily newspaper. Our segmentation looks like:

    Google: 56.8%
    Yahoo: 21.5%
    MSN: 12.2%
    Ask: 3.2%

    Our google pagerank is 7.. so we're pretty highly ranked on google..
  • dmron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I run about 10 different web sites, most of them are tech oriented but a few are much more general interest (for example, one of them is a restaurant guide for mid sized city in Oregon). Only half of them are blogs.

    Google absolutely dominates on all of them, more than 90% of search traffic across all my sites is from Google.

    But here’s the thing. If I look at the searches people do on Google that lead to my sites, and I go to Yahoo or MSN or whatever and type in the same search, I will almost always see one of my sites in the very first few results.

    What does that tell me? Not that Google is biased towards my sites, but that those search engines get crap for traffic (relative to Google). I can only conclude that Nielsen is getting money under the table from someone (probably MS) to downplay the absolute domination of Google.

    Here is my breakdown so far today for external referrals from search engines, to the restaurant site mentioned above:

    google.com (145)
    search.yahoo.com (12)
    search.comcast.net (3)
    search.msn.com (2)
    google.it (2)
    search.live.com (1)

    Ouch.
  • carapi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1So, a few idiots are using their own web sites as anecdotal evidence and claiming that Nielsen is wrong? Nice.

    In other words "We are idiots. Never take us seriously again."
  • markus941, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Also, judging by the fact that every single day a John Chow article makes the front page makes me think his audience is a little skewed.

    "A search engine user is 14 times more likely to click on an ad than a user coming from a website link."

    Are those stats backed up by anything or is that just conjecture?
  • Olney, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Google isn't king worldwide.
    So that's where the other search engines are beating Google currently.
    China, Russia, Japan Google has tougher competition.
  • virtualscribe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I've been seeing at least 1 post a week from your site make it to the front page of digg.com for at least a few weeks now; isn't digg bringing in enough to make a dent in your stats?
  • PSFK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Still.... we get 45% of our traffic from Google, 3% from MSN and 3% from Yahoo. We publish 10 to 25 times a day. It doesn't matter if we're a blog or now. MSN and Yahoo are underserving their users
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