If you have been following this natural SEO blog, you’ve noticed that we’ve been talking a lot about Microsoft’s new Bing search engine and the deal that the software giant struck last month with Yahoo. And we’ve been getting a few responses that run along the lines of what’s the big deal? Everyone uses Google anyway. Concentrating on Microsoft or Yahoo for natural SEO is a waste of time.
Yes, Google still leads in the search engine market, in pretty much all imaginable categories. And if you’re a dedicated Google user (confession: I am. I use Gmail, Google Reader and Google News several times a day), it may seem pointless to spend time and money on gaining natural SEO positioning for Microsoft’s Bing and the new Bing-powered Yahoo search engine. But those impressions can be deceiving. As the technology blog at the New York Times reported last week, the gap between Google and Bing is not as large as many think.
In raw usage, Google still commands 65 percent of the search market. But another crucial measure that anyone specializing in natural SEO should pay attention to tells a different story. Yahoo and Microsoft’s “searcher penetration” in the United States is 73 percent. Searcher penetration is the percentage of people who use a search engine, even if only infrequently. In other words, while most Americans still use Google for the majority of their searches, 73 percent of Americans still turn to Yahoo or Bing regularly.
So why is that important? It means that if Yahoo and Bing have access to nearly three quarter of online Americans. That means that if they can find a way to convince users to switch from their search engines and away from Google, they’ll be able to get their message to the majority of computer users. That could mean big changes for natural SEO as well.
You can see the full report statistics here at the comScore Website.
