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I don't really understand this. My positions are pretty good in Yahoo, MSN etc.. although none of them send anything in comparison to Google.
How can it be that it's such a high figure? I see others saying that they get 50% or 60%, sometimes less, sometimes a bit more, but is anyoine else getting as much as 95% of their search engine traffic from Google.
I don't do any spamming or anything that would be considered "unethical", so I guess I shouldn't have to worry about being penalized and thus loosing the traffic, but none the less I am extremely concerned about all of my eggs being in one basket.
The industry is consumer electronics, although it's a very niche segment of the industry.
What can I do to diversify this further? My rankings don't seem to be too bad in these other engines, which is leaving me mystified.
Basically maybe think about getting into another industry. Also try offline advertising....but adwords probably offers better ROI.
You might look into your stats and select a good number of common search terms (and their specific combinations) from your Google referrals. Then you might try them in Yahoo, MSN, etc., and see how your site performs in the SERPS for those different search terms. Compare these rankings with the Google ones.
If there are no differences (something I would think is unlikely), the key would be different users in different search engines for your specific industry (something unlikely again).
I also have another static site that receives about 80% traffic from Google. My guess is that 70-80% is the REAL market share of Google vs. Yahoo & MSN & others.
You're kidding right? I get zip from google, in fact I don't exist but rank at the top in Y! and MSN.
Count your blessings.
Artdog
As a small business owner, I'd feel more secure if I had more to rely on that just Google - but of course the traffic is more than welcome.
The site gets an average of 1,500 uniques/day. Not a lot of traffic - but at 95%, Google is supplying me with like 1,400. If Google were to drop me (and I don't think thy will because the site is clean), then I'd have like less than 100 uniques/day - which would literally be the death of my business.
I see what you have as a success. Rather than worry about what is working in your life. Let it ride and get what you can. Far better, diversify your business so if one area falls the other is there to ride on for awhile.
Congrats and get to work!
Artdog
Before Yahoo went their own way, I would generally get twice as much traffic from Google as I did Yahoo. Then Yahoo did their own thing - which led to a drop of traffic of about 1/3 from Yahoo. Then Google decided to like my site much better and has pulled dramatically away from Yahoo - now get about 8x as much traffic from Google as I do Yahoo now.
What's odd is that my rankings in Yahoo are very good - sometimes better than Google. Yet, I don't get much traffic from them - and indeed, there seems to be a slow decline in traffic from Yahoo right now despite the same rankings. I'm beginning to wonder if Yahoo might be losing a bit of market share in the search space to Google now that they've made the switch. Or perhaps more specifically, if the types of users that visit my site have gravitated towards the more "informational" angle of Google instead of the "commerical" angle of Yahoo.
Time will tell I guess.
ahem. What happened to a backup plan? Let it ride sounds like good advice from the competition.
You could build a backup site, or even better build a second site selling something else.
Getting Affiliates for your product is another route to more secure traffic.
I asked a Yahoo! rep (at an SE conference) for his thoughts. His answer was user demographics.
I think it is the fact they do not clearly lable the sponsored results.
Paul
I have a second site that sells similar items, and the 2 integrate very well. That other site has been online for about 3 years, and it too ranks very well on both engines, infact better on Yahoo for it's primary term (No.1 on Yahoo, No.4 on Google), but it too receives almost all of it's internet traffic from Google.
Thank you all for your suggestions - I am going to have to survey this deeper (analyze keywords and entry points) in order to see how I can further diversify these sites.
Just to mention though, both of these sites are faily well optimized - but the good optimization is really just a bi-product of great usability. They are designed for people and not robots.
Yahoo MSN do not index dynamic pages well.
Don't agree with that, nearly all my sites have dynamically generated pages as 50-100% of their make-up. Neither search engine has had a problem indexing them. Yahoo tends to only index pages that are linked to by sites already in its index whereas Google flies off anywhere and everywhere.
I must say though, Yahoo only has 30% of the pages that Google has but Yahoo send me the bulk of my traffic.
MSN on the other hand is behaving like a god - fetching in the 000's daily. I have to say it - from a spidering point of view, MSN is kicking the **** out of Google. I put some new things online yesterday - MSN found them within 15 minutes (no joke), Google has still not found them. This has been a common occurance.
I am very much so looking forward to what MSN has in store for us in terms of SERPS. Well done on the spidering - I can see thay are willing to pay the bandwidth!
It would be interesting to know how many searches Yahoo and MSN get in comparison to Google.
Well, 10:1 or 7:1 I could live with. But with 4728 referrals from Google so far this month, and only 80 from Yahoo, I have a ratio more in the order of 60:1
AOL is 3rd (with 43) for me in referrals, 4th is MSN (with 25 referrals).
This should elaborate my concern. These figures are for so far this month.
Yahoo has indexed only top level dynamic pages and refuses to crawl deeper than that, whereas Google and MSN both do.
i put it down to demographics as well, i dont think yahoo/msn are that popular in australia compared to google... i sure dont know anyone that actually uses yahoo exept some japanese students that are staying with me, and until recently that was google results anyway..
in fact, we dont have froogle in australia yet, but i get more visitors from froogle then yahoo!
I think that Yahoo is gaining something every month.
Yahoo Search and MSN Search users are mainly from the lower income demographic of $ 30.000 - $ 60.000 annual household income. Yahoo searchers are predominantly younger (25-34) and MSN is stronger with females.
Besides of that, MSN has a high proportion of visits from the categories of shopping and classifieds, business and finance, and travel. Yahoo and Google rank better in education, news and media, and entertainment.
This study was mentioned briefly in other forum (includes link):
[webmasterworld.com...]
A recent study has shown demographic differences between Google, Yahoo Search and MSN Search. Google users are predominantly males, aged 35-44 earning an annual household income between $ 60.000 and $ 100.000.Yahoo Search and MSN Search users are mainly from the lower income demographic of $ 30.000 - $ 60.000 annual household income. Yahoo searchers are predominantly younger (25-34) and MSN is stronger with females.
A recent study also confirmed that 60% of men who take surveys pretend they are women in chat rooms or multi-player games, lie about their income, and believe they have been abducted by aliens. Heh. Seriously though, don't give any polls any credibility ESPECIALLY when it comes to finances. You are relying on people to be honest about how much money they make, and that just doesn't freaking happen.
First you should take into account that it's a rare thing for someone who makes 7 figures (or mid to upper 6's) to bother with completing a stupid web survey so you're virtually cutting those people all together. Second, the people who make the least will lie - no one wants to put down that they make $20,000 a year and I would be willing to bet there are a lot more of those people filling out surveys than anyone else. Third, surveys are quite often filled out by people who are under 18 - so they're going to lie about income AND age. Fourth, you have a lot of "get paid to fill out surveys" junkies and those people just christmas tree the friggin thing.
Also, and I've said this before, you simply CAN NOT take 100 or 1,000 or even 1,000,000 random people and aggregate the data and say "this is what the world thinks". It doesn't work, it has never worked, it never will work, and I don't understand why people keep believing this B.S. data and irresponsible method of collecting it. This has been proven over and over again - compare independent polls that ask the exact same questions as the U.S. Census and you will get COMPLETELY different results. I would trust the census over any independent poll because there are no duplicates, there are fines if you're caught lying or don't fill it out, and Uncle Sam already knows how much money you make.
If you encounter a poll that isn't backed by Census data, consider it B.S. I would like to see a survey on how many people believe surveys are accurate :)
Well, I agree that sometimes some surveys are not reliable IF the research company is not serious. Any survey has two types of error sources: sample errors and non-sample errors.
Non-sample errors are, for example, bad questionnaires, people who lie, etc. A serious research company prevent this applying well-proven techniques.
Sample errors (the result of statistical methods for selecting individual cases) are easily measurable and sample techniques work perfectly, not just in social sciences, but in biology, agronomy, etc.
The point is: Is this particular research serious? Is this company lying or distorting the data because they have some interests?
However I am concerned that not more searches come from Yahoo, MSN, etc. I get about 1 out of every 100 searches from Yahool and less for the others.
I heard that Yahoo focuses more on percent of keywords and Google more on backlinks so guess I'm going to check my main pages and see if I can't tweak my keywords up a bit for Yahoo's delicate palate.
However I am concerned that not more searches come from Yahoo, MSN, etc. I get about 1 out of every 100 searches from Yahool and less for the others.
I heard that Yahoo focuses more on percent of keywords and Google more on backlinks so guess I'm going to check my main pages and see if I can't tweak my keywords up a bit for Yahoo's delicate palate.
