As website designers and SEO thinkers we tend to spend a great deal of time talking about Google and Google Search but we can not discount Bing or Yahoo!. These two networks make up 30% of search and that is a significant percentage. Just to put that in perspective in February of this year they reported to represent 153 million unique searches. I do not know about you but I would like to be a part of that search party for sure.
The findings from this report do not stop there. For me one of the most interesting statistics was:
Searchers on the Yahoo! Bing Network spend 25% more than the average Internet searcher (an increase of 3 percentage points from September) and 7.7% more than Google searchers.
What this means for us is that Google is not the only game in town. Yes, I spend a great deal of my time focusing on Google but I never forget Yahoo. Consider where your audience is when you are thinking about advertising and webmastering. Have you considered placing an ad on the Bing marketplace?
Another thing to consider about Yahoo is that they have a powerful network of people that use their services during football season. They are the leaders for fantasy football. This means that a large portion of men are already on the Yahoo site so you may want to consider how you can reach them where they are.
Yahoo! follows Bing
It is important to note that Yahoo! no longer has a webmaster tools section. You can not submit your website to Yahoo!. They have joined forces with Bing and so when you submit to Bing you are by default submitting to Yahoo!
Bing Webmaster Tools
You will want to create an account with Bing here: http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster.
A Few Tips
#1 Once you setup your account you will want to submit a sitemap to Bing and Yahoo!. If you are using the Google XML Sitemap plug-in both Google and Bing will be notified each time that you update your website. This is a huge time saver.
#2 Fetch as bingbot. This can be a powerful tool in your diagnostic arsenal. You can read more about it here and I would recommend that you make this a regular part of your website SEO routine.
#3 SEO analyzer. Bing provides an analyzer tool that can help you figure out the status of your on-page SEO. So whether you are creating a brand new page or just want to see how an older page stacks up I would recommend this tool.
#4 Spend some time using Bing and Yahoo! This will help you get a feel for how the search engines work. Search for people in your own field. How do they show up? How do they look?
In conclusion the key factor is not to put all of your eggs in one basket. In the past I have had people tell me that they do not need a website because they are using social meida. This idea is very wrong and anyone who says that they only focus on Google is very wrong too unless you know that your audience is only using Google.
What search engine do you use most and why?