Look at this, the stats for November 2005 just after Jagger: So where are the others? It IS only 40%...where is the 60%..that is more important is it not? (I'm not saying 40 is not important just that we worry too much about G) Ehhh? Achieving 60% without much trouble surely is better than being gutted twice a year by G do you not think? Anyhow, to continue... Ahhh....so here it really is without the hype, G 2.05, Y 1.52, M 0.73, T 0.44, A 0.34 That is 5.09 billion, and, therefore, G is 40%, as we know, BUT, Yahoo is 30% MSN is 14% ---------------- Total 44% ========= TimeWarner is 9% [read G] so G is now 49% just ahead Ask Jeeves is 7% which means The main market is ahead of G at 51% BUT ALSO!!!...... Hmmm...that puts Yahoo and others in the driving seat. I think we should watch Yahoo more.....don't you?
You could have a very good point there. I think its important to focus on the big three for rankings. The reason people tend to focus their sites on G is because they feel like - if they can get ranked in G than they will have no trouble getting ranked in the others.
Unfortunately, the American searchers' behaviour isn't a good measure for UK search behaviour. Whilst I rank better in Yahoo and MSN, these are the facts for me and UK traffic (last 151 referrals): Num Perc. Search Engine 82 54.30% Google 30 19.87% Yahoo! 19 12.58% MSN 12 7.95% AOL UK And that's not just due to AdWords - have ads on Overture as well. And normally I see Google represent up to 80% of search referrals. If only UK people used MSN more, I'd be laughing watching the cash come in faster than I could extract it from the bank.
Yeah, I had the same thoughts, but to start with, which is easier to remember/type: http://search.msn.co.uk/ or http://google.com (google.com automatically redirects to .co.uk as it knows I'm using UK ISP) How the hell do they expect people to type that MSN one when they're in a hurry.
I know one thing If I build a site and target msn and yahoo, there is like at least 90% chance its going to be profitable, maybe even 100% if I just recreate something I know already works. I know ranking in google would be worth many times the income, but the percentage of affilate sites I have been able to rank in google recently is about 0%. The only sites I still have that rank in google are >3 years old, and non-affiliate sites. Sooo for me personally I just hit msn and yahoo as much as I can, and keep an eye on google for any patterns that emerge.
i think the PPC is the way forward. if one can be profitable with PPC there is no better way to live. just work on the site using funds generated with PPC and the site will show high in the SERPs eventually. and even if the high SERPs do not come, why worry? just multiplicate the successful PPC scheme. yeah, gotta become an adwords pro