Lop Sided SE Referrers

Google aint that popular

[brotherhood of LAN]

This is the stats for search engines in the first 10 days of Feb for my site, bearing in mind the site has only been about for 3 months

# Search Engine - Referrers - %
1 Google 1,038 58.38%
2 Yahoo 702 39.48%
3 Netscape 20 1.12%
4 Lycos 10 0.56%
5 AltaVista 7 0.39%
6 Ask Jeeves 1 0.05%

Isnt this a little lop sided? I know I should be getting hits from SE's more evenly, at least a little

any explanation for this lop-sidedness? Also, Ive submitted my site to all the major engines, noticed that AltaVista has chosen to link to only 1, a "links" page, the only page containing links

Anyone decipher the above info into something that can be done to change this? :)

Richard

[Key_Master]

I'm splitting hairs, but I don't see google.yahoo.com which is a substancial referrer also. Maybe those hits are being logged as google referrers.

[IanTurner]

I would have expected Lycos to be slightly higher.

No MSN, means no Inktomi or Looksmart listing.

MSN and Google tend to be most popular referrers.

[Key_Master]

It could also be your traffic analyzer. This is the way mine shows todays referring domains (personal referrals omitted).

alltheweb.com
alsnetbiz.com
altavista.com
aolsearch.aol.ca
aolsearch.aol.co.uk
aolsearch.aol.com
apple.directhit.com
ask.com
askjeeves.com
att.net
attbi.com
auto.search.msn.com
bonzi.com
c4.com
ca.google.yahoo.com
ces.oingo.com
click.hotbot.com
directory.google.com
dpxml.verizon.net
gogle.com
google.ca
google.ch
google.co.uk
google.com
google.net
google.yahoo.com
goolge.com
home.bellsouth.net
hotbot.lycos.com
interiordec.about.com
ixquick.com
looksmart.com
mamma.com
mamma57.mamma.com
monstercrawler.com
msn.directhit.com
nbci.dogpile.com
northernlight.com
overture.com
partners.search.msn.com
queryserver.com
rr.looksmart.com
search.alberta.com
search.aol.com
search.aol.com:80
search.atomz.com
search.com
search.cometsystems.com
search.dogpile.com
search.earthlink.net
search.evreka.passagen.se
search.iwon.com
search.koolhosting.com
search.lycos.com
search.metacrawler.com
search.msn.ca
search.msn.com
search.netscape.com
search.sli.sympatico.ca
search.supereva.it
search2.cometsystems.com
srch.excite.com
srch.overture.com
srd.yahoo.com
uk.google.yahoo.com
us.f108.mail.yahoo.com
wap.google.com
web.webcrawler.com
webferret.search.com
websearch.cs.com
wisenut.com
worldnet.att.net
www1.overture.com

[brotherhood of LAN]

The stats are from webtrends. I appreciate that I may not be listed on all engines, which should also be taken into account.

As for google.yahoo, I believe those are the "web page" SERP's. btw I have no directory listing.

Side note, would the Yahoo listing be worth it? I have plenty content

[Key_Master]

Can't help you with the Yahoo question. Personally, I wouldn't pay them a dime. I do think a Looksmart listing will give you a boost with MSN. A dmoz listing will help too, if you haven't got one yet. Aside from that, Google is a very popular referrer and that can't be avoided (unless you've been penalized).

[brotherhood of LAN]

Oh yes! im not complaining about the referrals from Google!!

Id be interested in the Looksmart listing, what % of referrals do they send you, i.e. ya think its worth it?

I already have a listing in the ODP.

The reason why I bring this whole thing up is because of previous threads I have read. Although Google referrals 99 times out of 100 is the largest referrer to a site, it should be in proportion to the other search engines, if you see what I mean

Going on scale, if Google does 60% of all searches on the web, then my site should hopefully get 60% of referrals from Google.

I say this because in that scenario the ratio of popularity to search engines / to hits to my site is the same as the ratio of searches on the web

this should be a good thing i guess. Howeveer, since google is a cut above, i can understand why they send me the most visitors! :)

[ggrot]

I'd say your yahoo is low as a percentage, likely indicating that you have no directory listing. Personally, I think a Y! directory listing in many markets is one of the absolute best marketing investments you can make. It just depends on your market. You'll never get highly competitive phrases on google.yahoo.

I'd also say that you should work on msn/aol. Not sure how long looksmart will last, but definitely consider ink.

[tedster]

People's difficulty measuring the "Looksmart effect" is the biggest liability that Looksmart has.

A Looksmart listing gets you into hundreds of ISP search engines, not just Alta, MSN and iWon. And that brings in traffic from many directions -- but it's not easy to track as part of what Looksmart does for you. As long as their fee is still one-time, I know it's valuable.

Yahoo, even with an annual fee, is still a powerhouse traffic generator. How long does it take to regain the $299 and get a positive ROI? That's the question and it depends on your site's business model.

[Key_Master]

>>>Id be interested in the Looksmart listing, what % of referrals do they send you, i.e. ya think its worth it?

Yes, I think it's worth it. You might even be able to get a free listing through zeal.com. Can't give you a figure but you will see a bump in traffic.

>>>Going on scale, if Google does 60% of all searches on the web, then my site should hopefully get 60% of referrals from Google.

Who came up with the 60% figure? I bet it's less than 10% if you include directories and foreign sites.

Diversify your search engine and directory submissions. I remember when my Google referrals were in the 40% range. Too scary to give any company that much of a hold on a site. I spent a week submitting to other smaller and less known engines and directories and it paid off. I sleep a little easier now.

[brotherhood of LAN]

Hey

Keymaster, the 60% figure was just an example

My site, does not sell anything (at present), as it is a site dedicated to biology. However, some of my content may go on to a CD alongside the dictionary on my site

site gets 1000 uniques/3500 page views. From this, the run of network ads I run cover the cost. Server costs $30 a month (v.reliable server) and as my pages are quite small in size, my traffic can increase 10 fold without paying any more

In light of this, I might have some spare $ without digging into my own pocket. I've always thought Yahoo would be the first choice to part with money for a listing, because as state, im not in the "web sites" section.

My site offers enough content and is simple enough to use, so I guess I wouldnt be worrying about being rejected. However, I wouldnt want to pay for a listing thats going to get shoved to the bottom of an endless list of biology links

As for "ink" and the likes, im not familiar with them. All in all, Google and Yahoo provide the majority of SE referrals, with some large .edu sites making up another part of the majority

Perhaps some URL's to previous threads in regards to the 'must have' listings?

Please bear in mind the nature of my site, its not like I get a listing to make a fast buck, this is a long term thing.

In essance, I just want to make sure Im not shortchanging the value of my site

Hearing about search engine X boosting links to search engine Y is a little confusing to me, well, I understand why, but since ive only been making my site for a short time, and I'm not full time, Im unfamiliar with the mechanics of related search engines

Hanging on the motherly apron of Google seems to be ok for now, im just waiting for the spider to catch up with content!

But I'd very much appreciate some 'next steps' in promotion of my site in the SE's

OT Im going to write a cut and paste letter to send to sites similar to mine for some link pop, i aint donee that in at least a month, hopefully get a few inbound links before mr googlebot comes to town ;)

Thanks all for posting, look forward to tips n more info

Richard

[ciml]

brotherhood_of_LAN:
> Isnt this a little lop sided?

As Key_Master points out, your analysis is presumably including google.yahoo.com in your Google ot Yahoo figures.

There are four main things about your site that should cause you to have a higher than average proportion of visitors from Google.

1. Your domain isn't old; Google crawls and lists quickly. Over months and years you'll pick up listings in the crusty old engines that don't update often.

2. You have a reasonable amount of content and you tend to use good titles for your deep pages. You will therefore have a good spread of words to be found under in Google because it lists deeply. I have a site for a local business where the top 119 search phrases account for less than half the traffic, in another the top two phrases account for more than half the traffic.

3. You have some good inbound links. Google rewards this.

4. Your target market are likely to use Google. You would expect the likes of Ask to do much better (and Google proportionately less well) if your site was about computer games or Britney Spears photo's.

Those things now written, I should also point out that you need to check that your stat's package isn't including images and CSS. The Google cache and the image search can push up Google's apparent importance.

Calum

[fireice]

I know my logs for my site showed the same result at around the same time but it was because Google had spidered my very large side producing a lopsided amount of referrers.

[Marcia]

brotherhood, in spite of any future plans, your site as it is right now is not a commercial site, and might just qualify for a Zeal listing, which gets you into Looksmart at no charge. If that changes later, so be it.

Or was this already mentioned and I missed it in a post?

[brotherhood of LAN]

Marcia thanks for the info!

Last time I heard of Zeal was when I submitted the 'old site' to it about six months ago which was under a free domain name

Should I ask them to alter the current listing or get a completely new listing? :)