PDA

View Full Version : Disparity between search engines



the goat
02-21-2009, 08:30 PM
I was wondering what the biggest difference in rankings on the different search engines is with other peoples sites.

I have a site that ranks 9th and 16th for it's two best keywords in Yahoo and is non-existent in google. I use the firefox rank checker and I'm not 100% sure how far it searches, but I believe it goes well over a hundred.

Has anyone else seen such a big difference with the same site in two major search engines like that?

vangogh
02-21-2009, 09:52 PM
I've had pages rank #1 for a particular phrase on one engine and not rank at all on another. I think rank checker goes back 1000 results which is all the engines show.

nealrm
02-22-2009, 09:22 AM
That is common. The search engine rank by different criteria. So what is important for Yahoo is not necessary important for Google.

billbenson
02-22-2009, 10:21 AM
Just checked. I'm number 2 under the manufacturer for Y and G, but way down in the mud in MSN.

Marcomguy
05-09-2009, 10:44 AM
I've also noticed huge disparities between Google, Yahoo and Live (MSN). It's like they're all searching through Internets on different planets.

Business Attorney
05-09-2009, 02:29 PM
All of which goes to show that when you are looking for something in depth, it really pays to look at more than one search engine. I imagine many of us use the same search engine nearly 100% of the time.

Harold Mansfield
05-09-2009, 04:22 PM
Google is obviously shows the most relevant results. The best way to insure you are seeing them correctly is too make sure you log out of Google and search, or you will get tailored results based on your search habits.

The only way that I have ever been number one on Yahoo, or MSN, is to have the exact search term as the domain, and that doesn't always work either. I admit, I have no idea what MSN uses for an algorithm....at times it seems to take forever just to be indexed.

KristineS
05-10-2009, 10:18 AM
I've had this happen. The search engines seem to rank based on different things. Eborg9 is right though, Google is the one that really matters. A large percentage of searches will always come from there.

royhunters
08-04-2009, 10:49 PM
I submitted a sitemap to Bing when it was launched and we really place well on it, top 10-15 for our keywords, Yahoo.. we rank the worst because I refuse to pay them for anything, Google.. within the top 4 pages across the board but our site is fairly new so I don't sweat it.

Bing for us is the fastest to get pages indexed on. Usually just a simple sitemap and you're there.

vangogh
08-04-2009, 11:07 PM
Lucky for you then that Yahoo search is going away and in all likelihood since you do well with Bing you'll eventually see more visits from a search on a Yahoo property.

I think with Bing it's simply that it's still easier to game. More of the old tricks that would no longer work on Google will still work with Bing.

royhunters
08-05-2009, 12:52 AM
I would rather there not be two identical search engines anyway, Id like to see microsoft get a bigger share because then if we dont place so well in Google then at least we are getting traffic from someplace else, this 67% share that google has can be devastating to a small business owner that does not have the time or money to make google happy. I see that a lot with business here, I mean some people are really upset that google has made it such a challenge for their local business to be found... It's like wall-marting the internet.. the little guys keep getting the short end of the stick and that is REALLY sad. If it were not for the local map... It would be 10X worse.

vangogh
08-05-2009, 01:03 PM
It'll be interesting if the new bigger Bing will offer some competition to Google. I have a hunch a lot of Yahoo users will move to Google and it's market share will end up increasing, but we have some time to see if that does or doesn't happen.

I am all for competition though. I think the quality of Google's results has actually gone down in the last year or so and I have a much harder time finding things than I used. More and more I'm going to specialty or niche search engines. If I want some quick and shallow information I'll just search Wikipedia. If I'm looking for something movie or tv related I head to IMDB, etc. I keep adding different search engines to my browsers and just use the one that seems most appropriate for my query.

royhunters
08-05-2009, 05:53 PM
I would not call them tricks, I believe the reason we place higher on Bing than Google is the Google search results are packed full of pages that really are what I call duplicate content and Bing is not.

Let me clarify that, for example my website. I occupy about 9 different slots in search results for my keywords in the top 5 pages of Google. 8 out of those 10 are from our pages on MerchantCircle, Linkedin, Digg, EzineArticles, PrWeb, Blog Catalog, Squidoo, technorati, and the other 2 are our actual site pages.

My site pages are the lowest ranked in Google.

But on Bing I do not have ANY pages from those other sites showing up in keyword searches and my site ranks #2 on Bing.

So.. to me it is obvious Google is taking care of those companies before taking care of me. In Bing I am placing because I have a good site with unique content that is optimized properly, good code, etc and took the time to submit a sitemap to them.

So I wont say Bing likes old tricks, if anyone is playing any tricks it is Google by giving all this "love" to the sites that are full of useless content (merchant circle being the exception)

You said that you felt submitting articles to to these services was a waste of time... It's not when they rank higher than my website does and allows me to have 8 more slots in the results.

I think my merchant circle page sits at #2 in Google, Digg was #5, and Linked in was #10 and my homepage was #42 or bouncing in the fold.

So that is where I have a problem with Google results. I dont really feel they are the most relevant when they can be bought. I dont pay Bing anything.

royhunters
08-05-2009, 05:57 PM
It's also interesting that my site was #2 in that search engine I showed you Kartoo.. That engine is in France! I dont pay them anything either and did not even remember them until you made that post about all those search engines.

vangogh
08-05-2009, 06:00 PM
Tricks was a bad choice of words on my part. What I meant was older tactics. Things SEOs used to do for Google that no longer work there, but still do work on Bing. From my understanding though you can fool Bing more than you can Google when it comes to things like the quality of your links.

I'm not crazy about the results I've been seeing from Google recently. I still like them better than Bing, though in all fairness I haven't given Bing an in depth look yet.

royhunters
08-05-2009, 07:39 PM
Believe me, I am the last person in the planet that would beat Microsofts drum, the ONLY reason I have IE8 on my desktop is to ckeck pages to see how they display. THATS IT! I am happy with FF3.5 and sometimes I play with chrome

Anyway I have been forcing myself to use bing the last few days and I am happy with it because it is not ram packed full of social site pages and crappy pages that are ranking well because of whatever SEO trick they are using for google... Some really do not deserve to be where they are. You see it, I see it.

I really think everyone is giving Google way too much credit. What I see them doing is monetizing search results with all these social sites.

I am not liking the new algo they have employed. Not one bit. Local search is going down hill, I am bombarded with all these goofy wanabe linkedin sites.. It's insane.

Biggest problem for me is one of my primary search keywords I use most of the time is MARKETING

vangogh
08-06-2009, 12:19 AM
Good luck with that 'marketing' keyword. No competition there at all :)

I agree with you about Google. I think their results have been getting worse over the last year or so. What bugs me the most is when I use some of their advanced operators and they seem to ignore it. They seem to be trying too hard to guess at what I want rather than just give me what I asked for.

All the social sites are a result of their move toward ranking brands and authority. Those social sites do have a ton of authority. It makes to show them if you're searching for someone by name or username, but I don't need to see tweets ranking.

I'm not impressed with Bing though. Granted I haven't looked at it alot, but it looks to me like Microsoft's old crappy results wrapped in a pretty package. On the positive side Bing seems to like my sites more than Yahoo does so I expect I'll see a bump in search traffic to most of my sites once Bing takes over.

What I'm doing more is going to topic specific search engines. Another example is WordPress. I work with WP a lot. So I have several places in the WordPress codex set in my search bar in FF. I'll use any or all of them if I have a question and go to Google as a last resort. In Safari I found a plugin that let's me add any search engine I want. If I can add any site's internal search engine to the search bar in Safari, by observing how the site search works and copying and pasting the right part of the URL.

royhunters
08-06-2009, 10:17 AM
I am still a windows user, other than using Linux hosting, so I dont know a lot about safari, FF gives me a list of I dunno a couple hundred or so topic search engine plugins I can choose from and I use about ten, I can relate to what you are saying about topic specific search, and some of the unknown search engines are really good for that.

My statement was more confined to the thought that there are only 3 engines to choose from because for the most part, and for your average searcher, there really is only 3. People like us appreciate the benefit of topic search engines, but for "regular people" they fall into the category of dark matter, they exist but most people do know know they are there or really have a day to day use for them.

Ok, I'll go as far as saying there are 4, Teoma or ASK! is still fairly known and somewhat used. Outside those 4 you are outside the realm of 99% of searchers.

vangogh
08-06-2009, 12:31 PM
The plugin on Safari works similar. The search bar is in the exact same place. The difference is instead of being able to click to add a search engine I have to do a little more work. However that extra work also makes it more flexible as I can add more than what's provided for FF.

I agree that the majority are going to one of the major search engines, but I do think that will change some. More people will discover the specialty search engines and begin to use them. The majority will use the major engines to search everything though.