HELLO WORLD!
For quite a while now, I’ve been on this on-going “battle” to work on Search Engine Optimization (SEO – if you want to sound cool) for my own site. Â I’ve had some good success, not perfect, but still pretty good. Â As of right now (Tuesday, morning, August 11, 2009) here’s where I stand for Fort Wayne Web Design:
- Google – 9th (still on the first page)
- Bing (MSN) – 3rd
- Yahoo – 2nd
So, what I find really interesting about the results is the question: based on the rankings above, which sites would you assume send me the most traffic?
Well, the obvious answer would be Yahoo, followed by Bing. Â After all, I have a much higher ranking on those two search engines. Â And, while I am on the first page of Google, I’m not “above the fold” – meaning that my site won’t appear on most monitors – you would have to scroll down. Â So, all this adds up to mean that you would think that I would get a significant amount of traffic from sources like yahoo and bing.
But (and I know you can sense it coming), that would be wrong. Â The reality is that Google, despite my poorer showing, sends me much, much more traffic. Â And, while that didn’t surprise me a ton, what did surprise me is just how big the difference is.
Take a look at the graph below:
Taken from Google Analytics, it shows traffic coming my way from the top 4 search engines – ONLY search engines – other sources are filtered out. Â What surprised me was that Google sends me 20 times more traffic than Yahoo and an amazing 145 times more traffic than bing. Â As a matter of fact – bing ranks up there with baidu – a Chinese search engine.
So, what’s the moral of this story? Â I suppose it’s the ongoing story of the utter and complete dominance of Google in the Search Engine arena. Â And, while I wish I ranked higher on Google, maybe being in the top 9 is “good enough”. Â Maybe, just maybe being in the top 2 or 3 isn’t worth the work it takes.