Alternatives to Google. How to optimise and when to do it?
So you’re looking for the answer to a question, general information or to purchase a product online. Google is the only place to go to right? Wrong. Google is the most widely adopted search engine with a global market share of over 80%. That said it’s not the only search engine out there. And in some regions of the world other search engines give Google a run for its money. To add context to this article, I’m Sean, COO at Gainchanger. A company that looks for the black holes in search engines and connect the dots to what really drives performance on SERP. So lets take a look at the three most popular search engines right now.
Bing & Yahoo
If you’re not an old lady living at home alone with 20 cats, you probably know what and who Bing and Yahoo are. One thing you may not know is that Yahoo is a web portal with tones of services, one of which is a search engine powered by Bing. Bing, a Microsoft owned search engine, is the second most popular after Google in most regions and also takin into account the joint marketshare with Yahoo in terms of search. Its quite close to Google in terms of services and quality in search results. The key differentiator would be its video search section and features for developers.
DuckDuckGo
If privacy is a concern of yours, then DuckDuckGo is the way to go. This search engine is not as widely adopted as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Though it “quackly” gained traction among those whom follow the security conscience school of thought. Better yet this means that you’re online activity is never followed on DuckDuckGo. To all those anti relevant ad people out there, this is the answer for you.
So how do ytouoptimize for these different search engines? The first step would be to get connected with the webmaster tools for each search engine and manage sitemaps, issues etc. pointed out in the consoles. The second is to understand where the majority of traffic is coming from and put in a commensurate amount of effort. Just beware that things which work on one search engine, may come at the detriment of another.
Gainchanger aim to be next generation marketeers and strategists, a company to watch and one, we at The Hive, are excited to collaborate in the future.