Search Engine Overlap and Divergence - Optimize Smarter
(Page 5 of 5 )
I tried many experimental searches, and one with high overlap was “browser.” Even though it was relatively high, the overlap was only 40%. Sixty percent of the results were still unique. That’s a lot; ranking in Google’s top 100 for this keyword gives your site only a 40% chance of showing up on Yahoo!.
For the fun of it, I made the results from Microsoft red. It looks like the guys who dominate the browser market don’t care about search rank. They were beaten by Netscape, Opera, Firefox, and Safari. No Internet Explorer page was even ranked well enough to show up consistently between the search engines; you’ll notice no lines connect the red dots, showing they are all unique. At least Microsoft can celebrate having beaten the Lynx browser.
The point of this is that using Thumbshot Ranking will help show strengths and weaknesses in search optimization. While most sites wouldn’t mind being on the first and second pages of Yahoo and Google, this is Microsoft. The most popular software manufacturer and browser developer has been shoved away by better sites.
Poorly ranking websites need to take hints from higher ranking sites. In particular, use Thumbshot to easily find sites that rank highly across all search engines. Take these sites; check out their code, layout, and URL structure. Find patterns and optimize with your competitors’ help. To see what kind of back-links they have gotten, you can always use a “link:” query in most search engines. This will show how much back-linking contributes to their rank, as well as showing useful sites you can try to get back-links from. You may also want to note what techniques these sites avoid.
It may be a headache to think about Google, Yahoo!, MSN Search, AOL, Altavista, and Ask Jeeves. But only optimizing for Google is a mistake. Tuning your site to rank highly on any one search engine guarantees you nothing on another. All SERPS and optimization methods are not created equal, and as much you hate to think it, the other search engines do have an audience. Only a third of searches are carried out on Google. I, for one, change search engines by mood and level of frustration.
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
