Top 5 SE's to target for promotion

[Acternaweb]

What are the top 5 SE's you would target if money was not in the picture. Why did you pick these as the top 5?

[Mike_Mackin]

[websnapshot.mycomputer.com...]

IMHO:
Yahoo!
ODP
Looksmart
GoTo
AV or Lycos
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Note that these are missing
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Google
MSN
AOL
Netscape

[mivox]

From my experience (and traffic):

Google
Yahoo!
ODP
Looksmart
...as many specialty/industry specific directories as you can find

However, I think Google is attracting mostly tech-savvy searchers, while the MSN/AOL crowd falls more into the middle-america/shopping mall crowd. Yahoo is somewhere in the middle.

Which engines I targeted would depend largely on why audience I was trying to reach.

[Hunter]

For myself it has been:

yahoo
odp (aol)
google
looksmart (msn)

[FreeBee]

Based on referrals:
Google
AV
MSN...AOL mixed
GoTo (only last 5 months with aggressive bids)

Yahoo, ODP and LS are probably the keys to the actual SE traffic.

[Napoleon]

I think Mivox has it dead right: "Which engines I targeted would depend largely on why audience I was trying to reach."

IMHO different engines have different surfer profiles. As an example, Yahoo... definitely good for corporates (B2B). MSN... more biased towards the other end (B2C).

Obviously lots of gray areas and cross-over, but generally I try to push sites at the engines for which I think the user profiles will match best. Not an exact science, but a science nonetheless.

For me, B2B:

Yahoo
Google
ODP
Industry/Specific
FAST

[Black Knight]

Demographic targeting makes a lot of difference for me - the top engines depend on the type of visitors I want to attract (e.g. the kind of people most likely to become customers of the site, rather than just sheer volume of passing visitors).

Yahoo users go for big brands and they like glossy, slick sites with pretty pictures. They like things easy rather than cutting-edge (which probably explains why they are using Yahoo in the first place). If your customers need to be bright or technically minded, Yahoo is unlikely to give you the most actual sales.

AOL is like Yahoo, but it actually holds your hand for you. :) In general, AOL search will give you plenty of not-so-savvy home users.

With both Yahoo and AOL, visitors from those directories will probably want to see a lot of good customer support before they'll become customers. If CRM is your strength, then these could be your prime value referrers.

Altavista and FAST both seem to attract more than their share of teens, especially teens from Europe. Altavista has always given me a lot more Spanish-speaking referrals than any other of the top engines. I think Babelfish gave Altavista an early advantage for non-english-speakers that still continues to be notable. If your site has multiple language support, your AV and FAST conversions could be very high.

Google users are generally a bit more savvy, and hate wasting time. They know what relevant results mean and they expect to find them. Eye-candy is not as attractive to google referrals as it is to Yahoo users, and they'll tend to be more analytical of exactly what you're offering. If your product or service appeals to the smarter or more technically minded user, then Google may well be your best referrer.

In other words, the demographics you target will usually determine which engine is really best for you, not in traffic, but in terms of actual number of sales.

[Acternaweb]

Thanks Black Knight: I have been trying to gather SE demographics but have been unsucessful. We are a b2b firm in a highly "high-tech" competitive field.
Any ideas where I can find demographic data supporting what audience uses what browser.

Paul

[Brett_Tabke]

IMHO Too:
Google
ODP/AOL
AV
Yahoo
Fast/Lycos
MSN

Google simply because they have the traffic. AOL too - mega traffic - a quality ODP listing in a better category can do megareferrals a day. Yahoo, all depends on site content and likely hood of visitor using that category/kw combo.

Acternaweb, there really is no public data on se demographics. You have to infer everything.

Google : split personality - newbies, and techies. The newbies from Yahoo, and the Linux crowd.
Lycos : The college kids. (pop culture kw's - music/media, fan sites, celeb sites.)
Excite : A weird one to get a handle on - they have a pretty diverse user base.
Fast : Euro.
MSN : MSN and WebTV'ers. The number of women that use MSN is quite high.
AOL : you know it...average joe use. Mostly computer illits (sorry) which leads to a pretty broad base of generic searches.
Yahoo : Corporate clueless and newbie haven.
NL : Research Crowd.