Which search engines are used the most to search for businesses?

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"Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in August with 63.8 percent market share, followed by Microsoft Sites with 20.6 percent (up 0.2 percentage points) and Yahoo Sites with 12.7 percent. Ask Network accounted for 1.8 percent of explicit core searches, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.2 percent."

Source: comScore Date: August 2015

My Thoughts:

By: JC Anderl

There are thousands of search engines on the Internet, but we only have so much time to worry about the few that actually matter.

Here’s a general percentage of U.S. explicit core search broken down by network:

  • Google Sites: 64%
  • Microsoft Sites: 20%
  • Yahoo Sites: 13%
  • All others: 3%

You can see that Google is the major player, with Yahoo and Microsoft sites like Bing picking up nearly the rest of the search market.

What’s this mean for small businesses?

Don’t waste your time on all the various directories and search engines.

Unless it’s a local site or industry specific, they are almost all a waste of time because they don’t have enough local searchers.

Focus on Google, Bing, and Yahoo to make sure that your website and content is showing up at the top of the first page for your business search terms.

If you’re not there…your customers are finding your local competition instead of your business!

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