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AOL and Ask Jeeves rose 15 and 16 percent, respectively, in the number of searches conducted, while Google and Yahoo! maintained single digit growth:

Search growth Q1/2005 - Q2/2005:

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings Mega View Search July 2005 - Graph by Axandra.com

AOL and Ask Jeeves grew three times as fast as the big three search engines.

Top Search Engines by Share of Searches, June 2005 (U.S., Home & Work):

Source: Nielsen//NetRatings Mega View Search July 2005 - Graph by Axandra.com

Google is first with 47 percent of all searches conducted online, Yahoo! at 22 percent and MSN at 12 percent. AOL Search held five percent of all searches, and for the first time, My Way Search made its way into the top five rankings with two percent of all searches.

My Way is a banner-free web site that allows you to choose Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves and Looksmart as the provider of the search results.

What does this mean to your web site?

It's no surprise that Google still is the most important search engine and that it's important to be listed there.

However, you're missing a lot of qualified traffic if you focus only on Google. Yahoo and MSN Search also can bring you a lot of targeted visitors. Optimize some of your pages for Google, others for Yahoo and others for MSN Search to make sure that you're not too dependent on a single search engine.

You don't have to optimze your web site for MyWay and AOL because these search sites get their results from the other big search engines.

User demographics, intent differ among search engines

"In June, the audience breakdown by gender at Google was 51.5 percent male, compared with 49.7 percent at Yahoo, 49 percent at MSN.com, 48.1 percent at AOL Search, and 46.3 percent at Ask Jeeves."

Ask Jeeves launches advertising network

"Ask Jeeves is now invading territory that so far has been dominated by the makers of the Internet's two most popular search engines - Google and Yahoo."

Baidu.com prepares for U.S. stock market

"Little known abroad, 5-year-old Baidu.com says it already is the world's sixth most-visited Internet site, thanks to a strong following from China's 100 million-plus Web surfers."

MSN shows off forthcoming search, mail deliverables

"Microsoft's MSN unit is getting new search, social-networking, Web e-mail and advertising-platform products ready to roll in the coming months."

Search engine newslets

• Ask Jeeves releases MyJeeves 1.2.
• AOL releases MyAOL beta version.
• Foovy.com is a new search engine that allows you to rate the search results. (Editor's note: Foovy.com is already supported by IBP's search engine submitter)
• Univision.com and Google partner.
• Google provides data for Current TV.
• ITV and Yahoo! join together for online search service.
• Does Google News have a sense of humor?
• The Yahoo toolbar for Firefox is no longer a beta version.

Marketers curious about Jeeves' new bag

"Tier-two search engine Ask Jeeves' new sponsored listings product is drawing cautious interest from search marketers. By and large, they welcome the new paid search alternative, but worry that traffic volume on the site and its syndication network may not be high enough to warrant the complexity it will add to their search buys."

Hey! It's absurd patent time again - Google & RSS ads

"Google might have gone far with keyword based advertising and automated billing, but the patent application still goes beyond any manner of good taste."

Cost per action in the near future

"I find patents quite bizarre, but i also find them annoying, inhibiting, and dreadfully insulting."

The birth of Google

"Larry thought Sergey was arrogant. Sergey thought Larry was obnoxious. But their obsession with backlinks just might be the start of something big."

As mentioned in the article above, it's important to optimize your web site for more than one search engine. If you focus your search engine optimization activities on a single search engine you are much too dependent on a single source.

To optimize your web pages for Google, Yahoo and MSN Search, use IBP's Top 10 Optimizer. IBP's Top 10 Optimizer uses a proven and spam-free approach that helps you to get your web site on top of the search engine results.

IBP 8.1 beta 5 version is available

We have just released a new beta version of IBP 8.1. The new version offers several improvements:

• IBP can now delete search engine cookies to make sure that your search results are not influenced by your cookies. This feature is optional and can be turned on in the "General Settings" window.
  
• The ranking reports now tell you how many listings
  you have on the first search engine result page, the second
  page and the third page. The listings are displayed
  individually for your URLs, keywords and search engines.
  
• The Web Site Optimization Editor now displays the
  last Top 10 Optimizer report. This allows you to quickly
  adjust your web page to the suggestions of the Top 10
  Optimizer.
  
• You can now copy the links of the Link Popularity
  Improver to the clipboard. This allows you to import these
  links into ARELIS.
  
• The Link Popularity Improver now finds much
  better results and it is faster than before.

All known bugs have been fixed in IBP 8.1 beta 5. If you want to test the beta version, click here.

• Can too many links hurt your web site rankings?
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• Is the Open Directory Project still important?
• The perfect balance between on-site and off-site optimization
• Does Google manually influence its search results?
• View all past issues...