Researching Changes To SEO Methods & Techniques

Search Engines use algorithms to determine how they will go about listing and ranking websites. The trouble is, they keep changing and so do the search engines, especially the newly branded Microsoft Live now called Bing. The new search engine is meant to give Google a run for its money but is not meant to be the Google killer that everyone expects. It is however, supposed to return closer results which is something Google is facing a lot of stick about.

With Bing being so new, SEO professionals should not be jumping up and down panicing about the sudden and short lived change in market share. Bing has to prove itself and has to maintain the market share before SEO techniques adjust themselves to favour it. Google has had a solid following for years and it'll take more than a new and prettier interface to make people change their home pages from Google to Bing. For us, it's business as usual but we'll keep an eye on how things develop over the coming months.

In fact, to put a finer point on what we mean above, when tracking one of our client's websites through Analytics, it showed just one referral from Bing. Just one ! Whereas Google had sent a few hundred which is less than 1% of all referrals.

If combined with Yahoo, the two could look like formidable foes but even combined, they now ( June 2009 ) stand at 20.36% of the market share, up just over 1% from the month Bing was launched.

Google's global market share is still massive and stands at 89.23% ( as of July 2009 ) down a meagre and non-life threatening 0.67% from June 2009.

Our SEO team spends a number of hours each week reading up on the latest changes to the search engine algorithms, the most important of which is still Google. By keeping an eye on these changes, we can quickly implement any necessary alterations to help keep your site at the top of the rankings. A site that enjoys top search engine positions, but fails to keep up with the changes, could soon find itself dropping quickly down the ranks and a drop in rankings could ultimately mean a sharp drop in sales.