Lets put it this way, there are many other search engines but Google is still the best no matter what.
Don't only use search engines to drive traffic, use social media & viral campaigns to attract & maintain the new traffic.
This is a good point, you have nothing to worry about if you know that your sites are stable enough and following policies.
Google is the current king, but diversity is always good for business. Use all available avenues for driving traffic to your site.
ankushkohli wrote: Yes, that is important and I need to do more of that. What types of social media and viral campaigns have you tried? I know there are effective techniques that amuse people rather than come across as spammy.
It can be scary but it gives you the biggest returns you will ever get. No other search engine will be more useful. The only other useful thing is Yahoo's Site Explorer, but then Webmaster Tools supplies enough of this information to the user.
The thing about Bing is that I'm not sure too many people would be using it if it weren't pre-installed in many new PCs and portable devices as the default search engine (and advertised all over television). With that being the case, however, working with it in mind is a no-brainer. When the search engine land guys exposed the Bing-copying-Google debacle, that made things a little more interesting. It seems, for now anyway, that if you optimize for Google, you get Bing for free.
What do you mean diversify off of Google? Are you talking about for traffic? There are a bunch of other ways to get traffic. Or are you talking about Adwords or Adsense? Are you talking about other ways to get traffic from CPC instead of Adwords, or other contextual advertising as opposed to adsense? That will help us help you.
That's like saying, 'I wish my car would run, I just dont want it to have to use wheels". The best thing for you to do is look at what is happening with Search. Will Google be around forever? Probably not. Everyone thought that Yahoo was the king of the web back in the late 90's remember? As for trends, go social! If you arent sharing on social media, then you are going to suffer big time the more that Google and other search engines get more social. As for search engines, Bing is the one to watch at this point in time, IF you dont want to rely on Google. That said, you gotta understand how they all rank. That's the best safety strategy at this point.
Never take advice from anyone who says these things. It's proof they haven't a clue what they're talking about. Bing has been stagnant, to declining, ever since introduction.
agreed, lol. I think (I would hope) that the correct view would be to expand beyond Google - but to not neglect it in the least. You don't diversify "away" from it, you diversify "into" other upcoming and growing search engines.
And, as I said, the issue isn't whether or not Bing is growing or shrinking in and of itself (in terms of its natural pull) - it's whether it's going to continue to be defaulted to on a growing number of mobile devices and laptops/netbooks. Microsoft has a habit of strong-arming its way into the market.