Today we will be looking at what kinds of search engines are used today and how they blend into your B2B SaaS SEO strategy.
What search engines are used today?
Google
Google is the leading search engine used worldwide. It has surpassed all other search engines to dominate the marketplace with usually around a 90% market share. With a bunch of free tools to use, it’s easy to see why it has gained such a stronghold.
Bing
Microsoft’s own search engine holds the second largest market share even though it is small in comparison to Google. It’s a good idea to think about what kind of customers will be searching for your product. There are many business professionals who use a suite of Microsft-powered tools like Office, Teams, and Outlook. Keeping this in mind there is a good chance that they might be using Bing alongside this to have everything as a whole package.
Yahoo! Search
Established in 1994, Yahoo! is a web service provider. It has its own search engine that has been independent as well as powered by Google and currently Bing.
Others (Baidu, Yandex, etc.)
Search engines like China’s Baidu and Russia’s Yandex have large usage due to either Google being banned or being propped up as a strong competitor in that nation. Since they aren’t used very much outside of their own region it’s okay to ignore them when trying to rank in the western market. Others like AOL and Lycos were once used regularly alongside Yahoo until they were left in the dust by Google, they still exist today but with less than a percentage of a search.
Here are some different websites that show the overall search engine market share:
Should you focus on a specific search engine?
Since Google is the most dominant platform with the largest market share, it is good to base any initial research on metrics that can be tied to the behemoth of a search engine. There are also many CRM platforms like HubSpot that will use Google’s ranking results by default to show how your page is performing and what keywords are related to that page.
How can you maximize your effectiveness on these platforms?
Search engines like Google and Bing have tools like Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster tools respectively. These tools allow you to look at lots of different metrics like clicks, impressions, average position, if they are indexed or not, and more! If you submit your sitemap URL then it will help the search engine be able to find and crawl your pages easier.
Tip: Once cool thing is that if you have gotten access to GSC previously then you are able to import the information that you have into Bing with your Google account.
