Google is going to die -- A discussion on Y! and MSN Beta.

Interesting stats.

Here is mine for the month of December (so far!)

1. Yahoo 42.86%
2. Google 24.29%
3. MSN Search UK 18.57%
4. MSN Search 14.29%

Google down to 2nd - compared to November where Google had over 89% referrals. Yahoo's recent changes (algo?) have seen a big increase in serps, compared to Google who since the first week in December have dropped serps that have sat on the first page for over 2years.

All I need now is for my serps to return on Google and I'm laughin!

 

Wow, some people really get a lot of visits from Yahoo! Is this because of Yahoo's popularity or worse rankings in Google though?

For our site, we undoubtedly rank better in Google and as a result, we have FAR better referrals from them.

Referrals for December so far:

no.1 referrer Google.com - 52,742
no.2 our own site.
no.3-10 - google.es, google.fr, etc..
no.11 referrer Yahoo.com - 4,318
no.12-19 - more googles
no.20 msn.com - 1,402

I think Google is by far better at handling large dynamic sites though.

Comparing a keyphrase that we have evenly listed on no.2 across Google, Yahoo and MSN we have had 201 referrals from Google, 68 from Yahoo and 29 from MSN. And I think it was on no.3 for the first week of the month on Google.

All in all though, I think Google have established themselves very well as THE search engine and even with MSN marketing their search like crazy, I think they will have a hard time beating that image. I don't expect Google to go anywhere and nor do I want them to go anywhere. I can't think of anything worse than resorting to Microsoft for my searches.

 

daamsie, hows Sam? Tell him I said Hi!

I agree with you regarding Google, but I do hope that MSN and Yahoo get a higher marketshare, you simply cannot rely on Google, or one search engine to refer traffic to your website.

Darren

 

hehe, will pass it on - do you know him from the aardvark forums ;-) ?

I see your point about not relying on Google for traffic and of course, this is not a great thing at all. BUT, I don't want them to lose their market share, because we're doing just fine off of that marketshare!! Maybe one day, when it's possible to get the same rankings from Yahoo and MSN it would be ok, but for now, it doesn't even seem a possibility with them, due to their painfully slow processes.

Wishing Google would lose their market share, so that we won't rely on them as much, is kind of like wishing your largest customer would drop dead, so you can learn how to make money off of all the little guys! So, I'm hoping they keep their market share for now

 

are the serps on MSN reflecting Yahoo for anyone else?

 

Worse rankings in Google at the moment. November, I was receiving poor traffic from Yahoo and MSN, and 89% referrals were coming from Google SE. Still trying to make my mind up if this influx period is completed, and I need to change my tactics, or if to sit tight and see what happens on the next BL update.

daamsie, yeh I know Sam from the Aardvark travel forum - you guys have done a great job on travellerspoint - all the best for 2005!

Debunked, do you mean same positions in the results? If so, I'd say no, I have KW's that are '3 in Yahoo and '8 in MSN.

 

My rankings in Google have never been better, thanks to the Coop...

Google - 3762
Yahoo - 722
AltaVista - 142
MSN - 85
Lycos - 20

Of course, most of my traffic comes from Google's .pt, .com.br and .ch websites.

But i've seen a lot of traffic start comming from Yahoo, much more then the usual for the last week or so...

 

Thanks m8, all the best to you as well for the year ahead!

re: the influx - I'm not sure that the fluxing ever ends.. I usually like to wait a few months though to at least have a good idea of how things might pan out. Unless of course, there is some obvious problem that needs fixing.

 

daamsie, yeh thats what I intend to do. Traffic is slightly affected, but luckily Yahoo and MSN have got their act together, plus after Florida I made sure that I was advertising on websites / offline marketing, to bring in traffic during periods like this.

 

It is much easier to get into Yahoo's and MSN's search rankings. Does that mean these are the better search engines? One would think not. This is merely a sign that these search engines are fledglings.

btw With a title like this thread's title, I thought for sure this was going to be an Anthonycea thread.

 

I can only personally state to the real estate industry for MSN and Yahoo, but as I have in google I have not seen any manipulation of MSN and Yahoo with websites related to the sale of drugs being listed in the top 20 for MSN and Yahoo as some are in Google. What does an online drug order company have to do with real estate????

Also some sites that are listed top 10 in Google for my areas kw1 and kw2 are not listed in Yahoo or MSN, Does this make Google better? I think not.

From what I have seen of Google only 65 percent of the listings in the top 20 are relevant compared to yahoo and msn for kw1 and kw2. Google has to drive more sites to adwords and this is one way to do it. Produce less relevant results. Real estate is a big income producer for google and their adwords.

 

I disagree. Google wants to provide the most relevant results, and that means making sure that just because someone wants their page to be on top, it doesn't necessarily mean that it does. Google is always changing their algo to make sure that people don't know what to do to get the high ranking. This may result in some few less relevant results, but ultimately will provide more relevant results as there is no "silver bullet" to getting a high ranking, so people can't just do x, y, and z and get the #1 spot.

It can be very frustrating for us, but I find it hard to believe it is just to get more people on AdWords.

 

I think you'll find that industries that have been hardest hit since the Google "Florida update" are also those that tend to be the worst offenders in search engine spamming and other "black hat" SEO techniques. The fact that legitmate site owners suffer along with the spammers is unfortunate but something needs to be done to clean out the crap.

As for it being easier to rank in Yahoo and MSN, that may be in part because they are less successful at filtering the spam and other garbage... that's certainly been my impression in the areas I search routinely.

 

Thats my point, I have not seen the spam or junk websites listed in MSN beta that I have in Google. Google for the real estate industry and I can not speak to any other is not very relevant.

Any website that is considered an authority site can rank in the top 30 easy for real estate terms. Check the results for Las Vegas real estate and look at the top 20 results, you will even see a online drug order company listed in the top 20..lol.

I have seen MSN beta use what I believe to be a nice little filter weeding out a few sites that are listed in google that claok and use doorway pages, they dont show up in MSN beta for what it is worth but yet place very high in google.

 

I believe that Microsoft will get a greater market share even if they have to buy it.

I think the new millionaires and billionaires at Google will have an effect. I never hear of any sensitive info being leaked by ex-employees. That will probably change as the people with the vested interest retire and regular joes replace them. I think more secrets will escape from Google in the future.

 

I've gotta agree there, however, I also find MSN Beta's index to be VERY small and only containing the MOST up to date websites... Granted, this isn't a bad thing, however many keyword find dramatically less results, some people base a search engines greatness on the # of results (not me, obviously)

 

You've made a very good point about MSN and Google being more specific. You do not see the spam on MSN and Yahoo that you see on Google. Google will know this and like Minstrel said, will work on the most affected areas - I'm sure one of them areas will be travel, simply because of the amount of sites that have participated in spammy, black hat seo.

 

For over a year now though I have seen this kind of listing in google. IMO I think that google doesnt want to fix some areas of their index, because it drives more income to adwords. I have a site in the top 10 of google for kw 1 and kw 2 and if I am reading the index right I should have a second site in the top 10 on the next major update.

I do know though that MSN and Yahoo are gaining ground at least in our real estate industry. Looking at the logs for most of our website traffic from MSN and Yahoo combine now have almost a 3 to 1 ratio. This has only been occuring for the last 20 or so days, but prior to that, MSN and Yahoo combine had a 2 to 1 ratio over google.

This last week however MSN traffic has out performed google. With Google we flux between 9 and 7 where MSN and Yahoo we are top 5 for kw 1 and kw 2.

 

Yeah, I think if you only look at a few keywords, it is very hard to claim that one search engine is better than another. If you want to see some spammy results in MSN, do a search for 'hostales londres' - Google isn't much better mind you, but at least they put us in front of all the spam !! I haven't tried many search terms on MSN at all - it didn't take long to find this spam.

And I am of the sort that thinks that more results = better results. I mean, how is it possible to decide the best result, when you don't even have all possibilities indexed?? Sure, if the page is total crap / spam, it serves no purpose, but a lot of the pages that MSN/Yahoo haven't managed to index are totally legit and very useful. Their indexes aren't smaller because they've weeded the spam - they're smaller simply because they haven't managed to index enough of the good stuff.

 

If you're a consumer looking for real estate, then Google is a horrible place to search. That said, I have noticed a few things about how Google handles real estate web sites. G appears to apply a content filter regarding real estate. If your site is a regional site that actually sells real estate the filter is applied. If your site is real estate directory or discusses area real estate (market conditions, etc.), the filter is not applied.

This makes sense for G - it drives more realtors to participate in the AdWords program.

Obviously, the filter can be beat. But it takes alot of time and effort.