Image via WikipediaOk — it’s a given that Google has become the household word for searching out information on the net, but it’s not the only search engine out there and often it may not be the best one for your needs.
Let’s say for example, that you’re looking for a job in Los Angeles. When I tested 3 other search engines for the search phrase “Los Angeles jobs” I get:
From Lycos.com:
- losangeles.jobing.com
- losangeles.bizjournals.com
- www.latimes.com
MSN.com’s results are:
- www.latimes.com/?classified/?jobs/??track=?topnav-jobs
- metrolosangelesjobs.com
- www.losangelesdiversity.com
While Dogpile gives me:
- Sponsored by: www.kimco.com/
- Sponsored by: www.CareerBuilder.com/Los_Angeles/
- Sponsored by: www.Dice.com/
Wow! What a difference between these search engines! And looking through these results, I see that Dogpile really gives me the best results for finding jobs in Los Angeles than either Lycos or MSN. Those are all employment websites that have pretty comprehensive job listings and all 3 give me the ability to put my resume on line which will get prospective employers looking for me.
So what does that mean for you as a blogger/website owner? It means that you are more likely to be returned as a top result on one of these other search engines than you might be by Google since these search engines are more niche driven.
It’s not so well known that a certain number of people choose NOT to use Google as their preferred search engine, but it is a fact nonetheless. If you’re a victim of Google de-ranking your site, why not encourage your readers to use another search engine? Especially one that you’ve submitted your site to and that has been indexed by it. With so much emphasis placed on Google and page rank, it’s no wonder we can’t see the forest for the trees, but in truth, only about 16% of all websites are indexed by Google. That leaves a whole lot out there for the looking.
Some search engine sites you may not know about include:
- Widow.com
- Cuil.com
- About.com
- AltaVista.com
- MetaCrawler.com
- HotBot.com
Try my experiment and enter your keywords to see which one returns your site with the best rank.
Do you always use Google when searching the web? Do you ever see visitors coming to your site from other search engines besides Google? Now that you know about some of these other search engines, are you going to start using any of them?
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I like to use SnappyFingers when I want to search FAQ pages! You should try it sometime. I found it over at one of my favorite haunts, AltSearchEngines.com (where you can really hone your Internet research skills by keeping up with all the other search engines that are out there).
Thanks for those two! I’ll definitely add them to my arsenal