ePOWER TIP:
(full story)
How To INSTANTLY Know Which Search Engines Matter
For New Business ...
Getting search engines to consistently send your
site new prospects can seem like the blackest of
online black arts. Part of the problem is that
many search engines (including the "majors") are
really serving results from other search engines.
Knowing "who is serving whom" with respect to
search engine results then becomes a critical
marketing issue.
During the "good old days", each search engine
produced its own search results. This meant you
had to focus on each one separately to achieve any
kind of high ranking across the board. For the
most part, this is not true anymore. In fact,
today you will find that most of the major search
engines serve results to each other in rather
byzantine ways. This can ultimately work for you
(i.e. saves you and your Webmaster time and money
for search engine optimization) if you understand
the relationships.
Fortunately, I found a great resource that
visually maps these relationships in a way that
allows you to instantly see "who serves whom" in
the world of search engine results. By clicking on
the graphic below you will open a PDF of this map
that was created by Bruce Clay, LLC; a search
engine optimization (SEO) company.
By clicking on any of the nodes (on the PDF)
you will see a description of the respective
search engine and how it relates to the others.
This map also makes it immediately apparent that
Overture.com is at the center of today's
search engine universe (something I've been
talking about for quite some time). By itself
Overture.com is not that large or popular of a
search engine. However, according to this
relationship map, it serves top "visibility"
position results to 11 other major search engines!
This makes it the "Big Daddy" of them all —one not
to be ignored. For example, if you click on the
Overture node, you will see (as of this writing)
that Overture provides search results to other
search engines as follows:
ALL CONTENT: Ask Jeeves
Top 2 results: NetScape
Top 2 results*: AltaVista
Top 3 results: AOL
Top 3 results: Direct Hit
Top 4 results: HotBot
Top 5 results: Lycos
Top 7 results: IWon
Top 8 results: NBCi
This is particularly interesting because it
dispels the common notion (even previously held by
me!) that the top three results in Overture for a
particular search term are always served to the
other engines. Apparently this is just not so.
Now That I Have A Map, Where Do I Go?
There are several things you can do with this
information. First, if you cannot afford to hire a
true SEO expert (the good ones require hefty
budgets), then you can use
Overture.com to cover a great deal of
high-ranking-results search engine territory with
little effort and easily managed budgets. If you
have a Webmaster who handles your site search
engine optimization, they can use this map to
avoid unnecessary (i.e. costly and time consuming)
search engine submissions. That is because this
resource explains how submitting to one particular
search engine may automatically hand submission
for several others as well.
In my conversations with Bruce Clay (of Bruce
Clay, LLC), he said that this map (along with
similar ones for other countries) will be
periodically updated to reflect the constantly
changing relationships between competing search
engines. So it's a good idea to bookmark this map
and check back every time you or your Webmaster
reevaluates your site's search engine optimization
strategy.
There is little doubt that the major search
engines will continue to be a significant resource
to drive new traffic to your site for the
foreseeable future. Just remember you don't have
to become a wizard of the black art of search
engines to take full advantage of their
business-generating possibilities. However, it
certainly does help to have the "lay of the land",
and this tool is designed to do just that —at no
cost to you! |
