Every couple of months or so I look in at the tools provided by the Marketleap site (http://www.marketleap.com/services/freetools/default.htm); I don't suppose they're anything exceptional, but they're interesting. Anyway, in looking, I was struck by the differences between the "big-three" engines in certain categories. I find these differences to be more of interest than of importance, but here they are anyway, for seven of my sites. For the first two tables, I show first the actual numbers, then the values as ratios to Google's value (which is thus always 1.0), rounded off to one decimal. Under "Keyword Placement", the number is the page of results on which the site shows up (not its actual search rank): a 2, for example, means that the site is on the second results page on a search for its keyword phrase. BackLinks: Site Google MSN Yahoo G M Y =============================================================== A 353 11,503 23,600 1.0 32.6 66.9 B 60 3,731 2,730 1.0 62.2 45.5 C 1 8 434 1.0 8.0 434.0 D 295 12,230 40,700 1.0 41.5 138.0 E 34 21 6,660 1.0 0.6 195.9 F 11,100 74,142 296,000 1.0 6.7 26.7 G 13 9,331 585 1.0 717.8 45.0 avg 1.0 124.2 136.0 Pages: Site Google MSN Yahoo G M Y =============================================================== A 5,230 11,154 22,400 1.0 2.1 4.3 B 4,970 4,242 2,750 1.0 0.9 0.6 C 19,400 6,617 444 1.0 0.3 0.0 D 950 8,747 25,600 1.0 9.2 26.9 E 14,700 11,426 10,000 1.0 0.8 0.7 F 3,480 13,857 1,950 1.0 4.0 0.6 G 14,800 10,424 487 1.0 0.7 0.0 Keyword Placement--page: Site Google MSN Yahoo =========================== A 2 2 1 B 1 1 1 C - 1 1 D ---not applicable--- E ---not applicable--- F#1 1 1 2 F#2 1 1 1 G 1 1 1 Code (markup): Some site notes: Site C was never intended as an outreach marketing site (it's for a kind of service people rarely if ever think to look for on the net)--it's there as a place to tell people who enquire about how the business works "you can look at the web site". Still, it's curious that it gets page-one anyway on Yahoo and MSN, but is somewhere below page 3 (as deep as the tool looks) on Google. Site E is really just a "placeholder" site that is parent to two "sub-sites", so that E has no real keywords of its own (hence the "not applicable" for keyword placement--the tool does not seem to handle sub-sites). Site F has two (similar) keyword phrases, listed separately. Site D is a large site that seems to be on Google's shit list, for reasons I simply cannot determine; you can easily see that it is the one site in this lot for which Google's page count is absurdly low. (It, too, is a site with no real key phrase of its own--it depends on its individual pages being SE-listed, which is why Google's aberrant behavior hurts it so.) The first conclusion to be drawn seems to be that if you want to locate your backlinks, Yahoo, or possibly MSN, is the place to look, not Google. The second seems to be that at the bottom line, placement, no matter how different their data, all three seem to come to roughly the same conclusions. Nothing exciting here, but grist for the mill.
Nice post and great to know. However I am getting different results as far as one of your important conclusions. They all seem to come up with roughly the same results? May I ask do you particapate in the DP COOP. I'm going to assume not. That's why my results are much different. Yahoo and MSN tell a similar story, while Google seems to have a more pessimistic view of my websites. I think the COOP is why. It's probably and apple and an orange here but worth mentioning. Without the COOP tool I have always noticed a difference in results between Google and Yahoo, but not as extrem as it is now. Of late I am seeing that the linking game has changed with Google (don't like churning), MSN is starting to follow, which must mean Yahoo isn't far behind.
I think Joe and I are onto something that makes the churning get us reindexed daily despite the churning. Several others have posted similar results, but I aint taking. Although our secret is obvious. And no it's not the book store. Mr. Owl has hit a subject we can all learn from in our own ways.
In fact, I did belong to the co-op, on all sites save the two encyclopedias (which, in turn, were the only sites being promoted via the network). But looking at that data, I have decided to take a one-month vacation from the network, just to see what--if anything--changes, and in which direction. I am beginning to have some concerns about how G, at least, is viewing the network (which has nothing to do with how they should view it). We will see what we will see.
What's funny about this is, I too, have just taken a few of my larger sites out of the COOP. I needed to satisfy my own curiousity to see if there would be any negative impact in SERPS. So far no noticeable decline nor incline. You may find this thread interesting. My own test started about 1 month ago. I have choosen to put a few of my smaller domains over to another network that provides static linking and point the weight to my larger domains. But now we need to watch out for link bursts so it seems that webmasters need to be a little more careful with linking aquisitions these days. As usual Google is a hard nut to crack . Fortunately, with the many great members here at DP we can dig deeper and share our findings, as I see you have done on numorious occassions...Thank you for that! I always enjoy your posts.