Lots of Traffic from Google/Yahoo, NOTHING from other search engines

[lorenzinho2]

Hello everyone,

I'm hoping to get some feedback.

I am getting about 70% of my search engine traffic from Google, 27% from Yahoo, and virtually nothing from anybody else. When you consider that I have gotten about 150K sessions from Google/Yahoo month to date, it seems like a huge disparity.

Does this set off alarm bells for anyone? Are there any basic things that I should do/check to try diversify my traffic? Or is this ratio about right given Google's dominance?

Thanks.

[Sinner_G]

Google's percentage seems normal, but yahoo very high. Do you get any traffic from MSN? Are you in their index?

[lorenzinho2]

Thanks for the response. About 2.5% of the remaining 3% is coming from MSN. I am listed in their search engine.

[martinibuster]

MSN is currently divided into two indexes, plus a PPC listing.

Web Directory Results
These are LookSmart Directory listings. These will blow away on January 15 2004, but until then it's a good source of MSN traffic.

Web Pages results
Inktomi provides these results. Ink is owned by Yahoo. Ink may soon power Yahoo.

MSN has a wide demographic that encompasses many different people. Their search traffic is variously reported (roughly) at around 9-12%. So if you are falling short of that you may want to look into joining one or two of the above two programs.

[makemetop]

It's tough to be general about one site. I expect an average of around 13-15% of traffic from MSN and about 10-15% from other non-Google powered engines. Figures as high as yours are basically saying you get nearly 100% of your traffic from Google. I'd worry a little as to why. If/when Yahoo drop Google, you could be somewhat vulnerable!

[lorenzinho2]

That's great info. Any tips as to what I can do to diversify more? I've checked out LookSmart, and there are lots more pages that I can submit for various search terms.

I understand fairly well why I get good traffic from Google - lots of sites link to mine, and I have decent PR.

In terms of other engines, can I deduce that I need to pay more attention to meta tags?

[Mohamed_E]

I get about 85% of my traffic from Google/Yahoo, about 10% from MSN (entirely through Inktomi) and 5% from miscellaneous sources (these numbers refer to SE traffic, as opposed to links).

I do nothing really to optimize for Ink, though looking at their SERPs by and large I rank about the same as I do for Google.

My site is non-commercial, as are my competitors, so I do not have the problem of competing Looksmart and other paid listings.