For a number of months one site I manage has had about 33% of the leads for MSN, yahoo at 30% and Google at 28%. Now in August it is neck and neck. almost all three at 30% Google listing for a couple of search terms has climbed up in ranking, but this just looks weird to watch a shift and I'm not seeing where the shift is coming from exactly. Anyways, just a FYI, although it probably doesn't matter to anyone at this point.
The funny thing is, when MSN changed is when we started getting traffic to this site from MSN. So no loss in traffic elsewhere, just a gain from MSN. The search terms on google are 2nd and 3rd PAGE listings that are moving up a little.
I have a site doing the same thing. Got my first page 1 listing not too long ago and that made it so Google traffic was almost as much as MSN. I now have another term creaping into the top 10 in Google and traffic is about even between Google and MSN. This is all while I continue to gain more and more page 1 listings in MSN.
Google maybe checks the ranking of sites on the other SEs and maybe using it as a ranking factor. Hey if both Yahoo and MSN rank a site well Google must think that the site must have value thus it slowly brings it up in the SERPS.
I agree with fryman (must be slipping ). This all seems to be a simple case of G getting the site indexed and ranked. Then the result drives more traffic due to G's percentage of SE market share catching up with MSN. Doesn't even seem odd to me at this point. IMHO.
This is a 5 year old site with many #1 & 2 spots in google already and similarly in yahoo and msn. The site has been indexed and ranked for the entire 5 years but was really ranking only the last couple in the top 10's since it was a secondary site and the efforts were not put on this site. The change is just a few listing moving 1 or 2 spots up but still on page 2 or 3. This same site seems to get more buyers overall from mns and yahoo.