In the latest search share report released by comScore, Google maintains its powerhouse position with 67.5% of the search shares. The search engine giant uses the most intricate and volatile algorithm in the search landscape, covering over 200 algorithm factors for site rankings. This puts Google right at the core of every search marketing strategy.

There’s no question that Google holds the highest authority on search queries, but what about the other commercial search engines like Bing and Yahoo? While the majority of the market share falls under Google’s domain, Bing and Yahoo still provide potential traffic and ranking opportunities.

The Truth behind Web Searches

  • The key to effective ranking is to know how the search landscape works. Let’s look at the differences among the algorithms of Google, Bing, and Yahoo:
  • Backlinks play a smaller role in ranking on Bing than on Google.
  • Google relies on the intuitive and contextual value of the page. Bing relies on keywords, Meta tags, and title tags. Yahoo focuses on text matching results for search queries.
  • Social media sites and official domain named sites (.edu or .gov) have strong authority on Bing, while popular or commercially relevant sites take the top positions on Google SERPs.
  • Yahoo has a great amount of internal content that is always featured in search results. Google filters search results to answer specific queries.
  • Bing can index multimedia content, while Google focuses on HTML text. To index audio, pictures, videos, and other forms of multimedia content on Google, you will need specific HTML text or markup characters to go with your content.

Ranking for Google, Bing, and Yahoo: Is it Possible?

The answer? Yes.

While Google, Bing, and Yahoo have significant differences when compared with one another, you can still rank for all three search engines. The reason is that the algorithms used by Google, Bing, and Yahoo are—in a way—similar to each other. Yahoo search is powered by Bing; optimizing for either is like hitting two birds with one stone. Some of Google’s ranking factors are equally important to Bing and Yahoo. The effort you put into optimizing your URL, creating relevant content, and adding high-quality backlinks should carry over through each of these major search engines.

Why focus on one search engine when you can benefit from all three? With the ever-evolving search landscape and the unpredictable behaviors of search users, it’s best to maximize all available platforms to reach your intended targets.

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