SEO Warrior

Chapter 2. Search Engine Primer

It is vital for you to understand—even if at only a basic level—how search engines work, as they are not all created equal, nor do they produce identical search engine results pages (SERPs). Website owners need to carefully examine which search engines they want to target. The current leader in the search engine marketplace is, of course, Google.

When performing SEO, it is important to target specific search engines. You cannot possibly target every search engine that exists. If you are in the Western parts of the world, your choices boil down to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. According to comScore’s June 2009 press release for U.S. searches (http://bit.ly/sLQfX):

Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in June with 65.0 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (19.6 percent), and Microsoft Sites (8.4 percent). Ask Network captured 3.9 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 3.1 percent.

Google is even more dominant in Europe, with approximately 80% of search engine market share. However, in Asia the situation is a bit different. comScore’s press release for the Asia–Pacific region for July 2008 states the following:

“Although Google leads the Asia–Pacific search market, powerhouse Chinese search engine Baidu.com follows closely on its heels with only a 6-percent difference separating the two,” said Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia–Pacific region. “It will be interesting to watch Google and ...