Are Bing and Yahoo! Irrelevant?

[RobWynkoop]

I have always been a big proponent of "zigging" while everyone else "zags" ... so, if everyone is playing to Google's preferences is it easier to go with Bing or Yahoo optimization instead?

Obviously the traffic is going to be less, but are there methods that play to the strengths of Bing or Yahoo search?

Try to be objective about this one - remember, we're not trying to dominate all seach topics, just your own niche... there are a lot of aunts, and grandmas that use yahoo and bing because it's the default search on their browsers... are we missing out on easier competition by focusing only on Google?

[outwest]

Seems to me they almost skim googles links
I rate almost the same on those as I do on Google, seems they also use the same algorithm?

[RobWynkoop]

Originally Posted by outwest

Seems to me they almost skim googles links
I rate almost the same on those as I do on Google, seems they also use the same algorithm?

In my case, I had an authority site that was #1 on google ... It was a network marketing company blog so I taught one of my downline members how to blog to get leads... well it wasn't long before I noticed she was in the top 2-3 on yahoo while my site was no where to be found.

I just thought that was odd, because she had no backlinks and probably 1/100th of the content I had for that given keyword....

[prcys]

As all the SEs whether bing , yahoo or google all provide the results in the favour of people to provide the best results. But as google has be the famous and no.1 and that is why people use it more just due to popularity as since some time google has more concentration on the business promotion more. So none SE is irrelevant or worst but the thing is that people use it as per their requirement and as per the preferableness.

[neil_patmore]

Rob, great post. Here's my experience this Christmas:

One of my toy sites was ranking #1 in Google for a number of toy related phrases and bringing in around 3k uniques a day during October and the begining of November.

The site was penalised by Google due to unatural link building and dropped to between pages #5 - #7 where it remained.

Google explained via email that the site would remain there until there was a substantial effort to clean the links up, which was virtually impossible to do.

The site was ranking #1 on bing and Yahoo so I took the decision to optimise for conversions and focus on bing and Yahoo.

So far this month the site has generated just over $5k in commision from Amazon.

Whilst that figure would have been much higher if the site was still ranking #1 on Google, 5k is still 5k at the end of the day.

Whilst the search volume is much less, I don't think Bing or Yahoo should be completely ignored.

[RobWynkoop]

Epic win Neil! You took a slap that could have just caused someone else to give up and move on and you've shifted it into something that is working for you still.

Thanks for affirming my suspicion that indeed consumers still punch keywords into ole' Yahoo and MSN's Bing.

[Lucas Becker]

Originally Posted by RobWynkoop

I have always been a big proponent of "zigging" while everyone else "zags" ... so, if everyone is playing to Google's preferences is it easier to go with Bing or Yahoo optimization instead?

Obviously the traffic is going to be less, but are there methods that play to the strengths of Bing or Yahoo search?

Try to be objective about this one - remember, we're not trying to dominate all seach topics, just your own niche... there are a lot of aunts, and grandmas that use yahoo and bing because it's the default search on their browsers... are we missing out on easier competition by focusing only on Google?

In most cases, if you try your best to rank on Google, you will also rank on Bing and Yahoo.

However, the Yahoo bot sometimes takes its time to index your site. I had a site with hundreds of links built throughout several months and literally took 5 months before the Yahoo bot indexed more than just the index page of the site!

[RobWynkoop]

In the past yahoo used to charge $250 to add your site to their directory ... is this still true? It's this reason I never pursued it years ago - when it was still a viable google competitor.

[Carl Brown]

I have a website that's #1 on Yahoo and it made me $700 this year (not monetized with adsense). I'm not In the top 300 in Google with this website.

I have other sites that are the reverse of that. In general, Google is where I strive to rank but sometimes it's not predictable no matter what you do.

[gabquotesl]

they are ok, i get traffic from them

[Becker13]

Its been shown they get about 30% of the traffic, and I know for PPC a lot of people prefer them

[bitdoze]

Google brings the most traffic and that's why many people optimize their site for Google. From what I have seen Bing tends to use some of the results from Google, so if you will be on first places of Google for sure you will do great in Bing or Yahoo.

[quercus5]

I agree with bitdoze. I've had sites that have ranked high in Google and then looked to see where I was on yahoo/bing and they were in about the same range. The algorithms are a little different but I always strive to get high in Google and some traffic will flow in from yahoo/bing as well.

[indybail]

Mission critical? No, but both are certainly still relevant.

[Michael Coudriet]

Bing and Yahoo! should not be ignored. Then again, no traffic source should be!

[Ashera]

I find Bing and Yahoo combined bring in about 2 percent of traffic when I'm ranked the same as I am on Google.

I also find sites that are like page 6 of Google rank well on Yahoo and Bing (near top of page 1), most of these were SEO'd with simple scrapebox blasts years ago before I had a clue what I was doing.