Top Search Engines
When tracking your progress or optimizing your page, it is important to keep in mind which search engines dominate the market. After all, not all search engines are created equal, and optimization efforts should be geared toward, and judged by their performance on, the search engines that produce the most traffic. So, who should you care about?
In a word, Google. Depending on who you ask, Google owns anywhere from half to three quarters of the search market. That means that 50% to 75% of all searches worldwide utilize Google’s index. Quite simply, ranking well with Google can make or break your website. It’s just that important.
Second to Google are Yahoo, which holds approximately 20% of the search market, and MSN, which holds about 14%. While secondary, these two search engines have significant enough traffic to warrant serious consideration. If you feel the need to dig deeper, Ask Jeeves is the next index to consider, although it accounts for less than 2% of the search market. (Note: AOL actually falls between MSN and Ask Jeeves, but its index is fed primarily by Google.)