New Article - Google losing ground?

[thejenn]

http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/003104.html

Some snippets:

....recent findings by comScore show Google's lead in the search market realm diminishing. During that same time period, Yahoo! and Microsoft experienced ratings increases of 2.4% and 2% respectively.

Nate Elliott, an analyst with Jupiter Research explains it this way: "Search engines are more about fashion than they are about technology. Google is cool right now. In another year or two, it's entirely possible that some other engine will be the flavor of the month. These changing tastes have knocked off every leading search engine before Google. There's no reason to think it won't happen to them, too."

--

So, what I'm wondering...

Google isn't the only search engine to climb to the top of the rankings and seem unbeatable...how long do you think they'll be able to hold on?

Yahoo! has been a major player with their own engine for a while now...how radically did your search marketing efforts change when they entered the market? Are you still doing anything differently to make sure you are targeting both Google and Yahoo?

Microsoft should be fully entered in the playing field by sometime later this year. What are you doing to make sure your site/business has a presence in the Microsoft search results?

[4ndr3w]

Google has been so high for so long that they've got no where to go but down. Seriously, though, I'm very curious to see what MSN is going to be doing shortly. Microsoft has a way of moving into a space that it had completely ignored years before, and then dominate it just a year or two later.

But that kind of competition can only be good for marketers, as it should bring in some pricing pressures that doesn't exist today. In another article that appeared online today, the average cost per click, by at least one measure, is projected to cross the $.50 mark in 2005.

Perhaps another entry into the space can hold the line, or even push back the trend.

[David Wallace]

I think Google will be hard to knock off the top of the hill. I think we will continue to see a trend of things evening out but with Google still on top unless they do something drastically stupid which they have yet to do.

As far as SEM for Yahoo, a lot of people stopped using meta description tags when Google rose to fame because they pay so little attention to them. I have always optimized meta description tags because Inktomi always used them. Yahoo used weighed them in their algo as well but then switch to using the html text of a page to form the descriptions that appear in the SERPs. Now they are back to using the meta description tag again. So while many people neglected the meta description tag as well as optimizing the content of the pages in place of gaining link popularity, I continued to focus on all aspects which has paid off for ranking well in Yahoo.

As far as getting MSN to find your site's pages, there is no need to do anything but make sure your site is crawler friendly and that you have links on other sites such as directories where the MSNbot can find your site.

[Search4news]

Hello !

Very interesting comments, I also read Google is losing ground. However, Google's relevance is still important as you can see how search engines and even link exchange consider GOOGLE Page Ranking a key factor.

Did you know that Google update their index about once a month?

I have been applying their guide plus other inputs from colleagues and see improvement with my Google Ranking. I hope you will find this information helpful too.

You can read about:

1. The Basics
2. Why does my page's rank keep changing?
3. I'm changing my URL. How can I maintain my rank?


http://www.google.com/webmasters/4.html

Feel free to send me additional information on how to improve my page rank.

[David Wallace]

Originally Posted by Search4news

Did you know that Google update their index about once a month?

Actually Google is constantly updating their index. It is no longer on a month by month basis but rather a moment by moment.