It's pretty safe to say that anyone who has a computer has at some point
or another used a search engine. Search engines are extremely useful
creatures. They have had a major impact on our society, I mean its pretty
amazing that you can just go type in anything you want into a search box and
get back information about it in about two seconds. Before search engines
came along you pretty much had to rely on going to the library to get more
information. With that being said the popularity of search has created quite
a huge market. The advent of paid advertising has sprung search engines into
a multi-billion dollar a year industry, thus creating some pretty stiff
competition. Right now we are in the midst of a major war on the internet,
with the major players being Yahoo, MSN, Google, and an upcoming strong
contender in Ask. So you may ask who is winning this war right now? And why?
And who will take the lead in the future? One thing is for sure the reward
of being the king of the search mountain will reap billions and billions of
dollars annually.
So what are these top gun search engines competing over? The answer is
clicks, on the paid advertisements they present every time someone uses
their search engine. If you notice when you use Google for example that at
the very top of the page and on the right hand side it says sponsored sites.
This is where people trying to make money online pay to advertise for their
company. These prices range from nickels and dimes per click, all the way up
to hundreds of dollars per click, depending on the keyword. So the main
objective for a search engine is to get as many people as possible using
them to search the internet. Just think about it for a second, the more
searches they get, the more chance of people clicking on their paid ads,
which is where they make their money. Now of course not everyone is going to
click on the paid ads, only a small percentage of the searches they receive
ever actually make the search engine money. However, with millions of
searches a day it only takes a small percentage to really make a big
monetary difference.
So who are the warlords going to battle here? And who is in the lead? The
three major competitors are MSN, Google, and Yahoo, and Ask is fighting its
way back into the mix of things with some pretty sweet search features.
As of right now Google is in the lead, they receive somewhere in the
ballpark of 80% of all search queries on the internet. Google is estimated
to gross around 3 billion dollars in 2006, all from just paid advertisement.
Now you may ask why is it that Google is so far ahead? Well there are a few
reasons. First, Google has the most advanced algorithm, which is the mind
boggling mathematical equation that ranks and lists sites depending on the
keyword. Trying to understand their algorithm is extremely complicated,
Google only hires absolute geniuses to work for them. Second, is the
brilliance of Google.com itself, which is their homepage.
Take a look at Google's homepage, all you can do is type your keyword in the
search box and hit search. There's really nothing else going on it's pretty
clean cut and user friendly, with absolutely no distractions from getting
people to do what they want. Which is search
Now take a look at MSN, or Yahoo's homepage. It is just jam packed with all
sorts of stuff to do from playing games to reading articles about the news.
This stuff is great and all, however it does distract people from typing
into the search box and inevitably clicking on a paid ad putting money in
their pocket. I believe this is a major part in why Google has such a
gigantic lead in the volume of searches they receive compared to the other
top guns. .
So I firmly believe that in this case the giant will not be taken down. Even
though you see commercials for Yahoo and Ask, you know the ones with the
cheesy guy screaming Yahoooo and the monkey that Ask is featuring. The
bottom line is Google has the best algorithm right now and their site
doesn't distract people from searching, which will yield many more search
queries. Who knows though just as Google basically came from no where and
took over the market, there may be a new kid on the block that will topple
them. However as of now though they are the reigning champions.
Author Bio
Search engine specialist Steve Bis, is the author of the free search secrets
newsletter and owns a unique
web search tool
that will help you find anything on the internet in 60 seconds, eliminating
your search frustrations.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content
Link to this page:
http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/seo_search_engine_optimization/1454-searchwarsbattl.htm