SEO Blog

Serving nearly 60% of the overall organic search market, Google is obviously the primary venue in the minds of SEOs. Some might be surprised to learn that between 2002 and 2004, Google controlled upwards of 80% of all search results by feeding Yahoo! and many other smaller engines. Though their actual share of the organic search listings might appear to be down, Google’s information reach and its influence over the web is larger than ever.

According to the June 2007 search provider share report generated by Nielsen/NetRatings, Google produces approximately 58.5% of all listings served to search users. Unfortunately, that stat doesn’t tell us very much about Google’s reach and influence. It does however tell us that Google is the #1 priority for organic search marketers.

Just how large is Google? To say Google is very large would be a great understatement. Maintaining one of the largest indexes that contains web documents of all file types and sizes, Google is constantly growing. In order to generate lightning fast results for any given search query, Google retains a copy of each web document or file it has spidered on one or more of hundreds of central and regional server farms spread around the globe.

On a busy Wednesday with the threatening promise of more travel just around the corner, I need to write a good short post and move on to other pressing work. That’s why I wanted to write about the basic venues.  That thought was a big mistake in my own time management…

I had intended to write a short piece on the most basic organic spaces or venues where SEO services could or should be applied. As the search market slowly diversifies, SEOs have to prioritize their efforts to get maximum bang for their clients’ or employer’s buck.

Wanting to move quickly, I copied Nielsen/NetRatings’ list of the ten search providers for July 2007. Predictably, it starts with the most basically complicated venue of all, Google. That’s when I started to think and to realize the enormity of my early morning mistake.

If my first mistake was making the list, my second was stopping to think about it. There isn’t anything basic about any of the basic venues. Each is more of a multiplex than single theater. Pressing forward, here is the quick breakdown of top five search providers with their percentage share of total searches conducted.