Bing/Yahoo gain more market share

[prosperent brian]

Another 2 percent or so bringing them to just over 28 percent of search traffic. While this is still a small portion of the overall traffic a site can bring in, there is another piece of the puzzle that is often overlooked. Bing/Yahoo traffic, especially for affiliate related shopping traffic typically converts at several times the rate that traffic from google does. There has been a lot of speculation over the years as to why this may be, but the general consensus is that the typical google user is more internet savvy and does more "window shopping". Google properties are also typically strewn with far more ads and distractions which take away from the otherwise converting traffic.

Now, the difficult part has always been attracting more traffic from bing/yahoo. Here are a few tips from a Bing engineer, and a decent discussion on the subject: http://www.webmasterworld.com/msn_microsoft_search/4328329.htm

Worth a read :)

[cbass99]

Interview with the same Guy

http://www.stonetemple.com/search-algorithms-and-bing-webmaster-tools-with-duane-forrester/

[prosperent brian]

Interesting:


The huge weight placed by Bing on user interaction with the search results as a ranking factor. This was amazing stuff. Basically, Bing is willing to test any page by indexing it. In fact you can pretty much directly inject any URL you want into their search results using the Submit URL feature of Bing Webmaster Tools. Then they will test it, and if the click interaction data is bad, out (or down) you go.

[prosperent brian]

Going to test the above with a bing webmaster tools account and submit a few domains that I monitor.

[Zaphod]

Going to test the above with a bing webmaster tools account and submit a few domains that I monitor.

are you taking requests? :D

[prosperent brian]

You have to add an xml file to the domain. Similar to what you have to do with google.

[AcidRaZor]

Brian, somewhat off topic. But what do you monitor on your sites? I really have no clue as to what to look for other than "traffic in" and "traffic clicked through" and "earnings"

[prosperent brian]

We have a bunch of "goals" defined in google analytics that we use to track conversions and such. Most of our stuff is in-house though. Just mining the vast amounts of data we have in our system is usually enough. We're really focusing on getting more valuable metrics tracked. There are actually a few good books on the subject that I know Mike has read.

[toykilla]

It is too bad Bing and Yahoo dont index worth shit!.. Oh I wish I could get indexed by them, but I get 1 yahoo visitor for ever 500 google visitors.

[timbor]

yea that is my experience as well.. Google is much easier to work with, and with that easier to see what works and what does not.. The other two SE's take ages for me to get any real data to work with..

[Anthony696]

I am completely agree that Bing is getting popularity and its percentage is keep rising but this so far from the Google. Google is getting about 65% to 70% search queries from the world and there are many search enigne but these three are most popular. Recently Bing made some changes and from that time this is getting popularity, their image search is much better than Google, god knows it can beat Google.