From the course: Advanced SEO: Search Factors

Comparing search engines

From the course: Advanced SEO: Search Factors

Start my 1-month free trial

Comparing search engines

- [Instructor] We spend a lot of time in the SEO world talking about Google. In fact, this entire course focuses on Google. So let's take a minute and unravel why. As it stands today, Google controls 65% of the search market in the US, with Bing in second position, collecting 31%. Right away, we can see Google has a tremendous lead on the competition, but the story doesn't end there. Yahoo! was at one point a player in the space. However, they shifted a majority of their desktop search results to be powered by Bing, which, in turn, boosted Bing's market share. But things could be changing. Yahoo! recently signed a deal with Google which included advertising, search, and image search services. The details as to what Yahoo! will do in the future are vague, but they have the potential to tip the scale further in Google's favor if they cut ties with Bing. With SEO being a complex endeavor, it's preferable to invest energy into gaining traction with the market leader. Additionally, most improvements made specifically for Google tend to have a similar effect on Bing. The quality of your backlinks and geographic signals for local results will impact your rank on both engines in a similar manner. Additionally, the technologies for marking up your site aren't exclusive to Google, so Bing can and does use that markup accordingly. But there are definitely differences in how Bing and Google rank their results. The most significant being how they handle keyword matching. Google uses a more sophisticated algorithm, which recognizes context and synonyms. Google then tends to allow for a more natural search and as such, doesn't play favorites with exact keyword matches in content. Bing, on the other hand, tends to favor more exact keywords. So if you played into Bing's hand and developed keyword-centric content, you'd potentially diminish your rank within Google. And with Google driving the lion share of traffic, you wouldn't be doing yourself any favors. Optimizing for Google is a smart strategy for most scenarios and that's why we invest our time and energy here.

Contents