search engines

Going beyond Google – other search engines are available

The statistics surrounding web juggernaut Google are genuinely eye-popping. According to Statista, the portal is used for 90% of searches on desktop. Meanwhile, there are around 3.5bn daily searches on it, says Internet Live Stats. Equally, just over a third (35%) of product hunts begin with the search giant, and a similar number (34%) of ‘near me’ searches from desktop and tablets result in store visits. (Those figures are from eMarketer and HubSpot respectively.)

These figures, and others like them, speak for themselves. So it’s perhaps not surprising there’s such a strong global emphasis on Google-first SEO. There’s a constant tendency to look to this search engine for the most recent changes in website optimisation, and ways of driving more organic web traffic. If you want to see how well your website is optimised then why not get a free bespoke SEO video review.

However, it’s equally important to remember that it’s not the only search engine out there, and that others can also help your brand reach its target audience. For these, the same principles of optimisation apply.

It’s also important to keep in mind that, despite its size and popularity, Google may well not be the only search engine your existing and prospective customers are using. Indeed, outlandish though it may sound, your target demographic may not even be using it at all.

More reasons for optimising for other search engines in 2020

There are many other reasons for looking beyond Google:

  • Waning market share

According to Statista, in October 2019, Google’s market share was 87.96%, down from 91.7% in April 2012. For its part, Bing’s market share rose was up to 5.26% from 3.5%.

  • Don’t ignore potential opportunities

If you only focus on optimising for Google’s algorithms, you could potentially miss out in the rankings from other search engines. Google isn’t always the most used engine for product or visual searches, for example, so your audience may well be looking elsewhere.

Increasingly, there are also privacy concerns over the way Google uses data. In February 2020, for example, the corporation was facing an EU probe over its processing of user location data. Negative stories like this can only drive people – including your customers – to use other search engines. Similar concerns surround data harvesting and advert targeting fears.

What else should you be optimising for?

Don’t ignore the likes of Yahoo and Bing, for which you can optimise your website in a similar way to the way you already do for Google. And we’ve previously written about the Ecosia and DuckDuckGo websites. The former plants trees for searches, the latter has a strong focus on privacy.

Equally, it may be worth considering optimising for Baidu, China’s biggest search portal, holding more than three-quarters (80%) of the country’s mobile market share, and 67% of its search market overall. Meta descriptions are a ranking factor if you’re trying to feature in its search results.

In Russia, the engine Yandex, together with Google, has virtually the whole market sewn up. Yandex emphasises keywords in URLs while being less concerned with internal linking structures, and is slower at finding new content than its more global counterpart.

Going beyond traditional search engines

It’s also worth looking past the standard search engines and optimising your content for things like Amazon, Pinterest and YouTube. Search on the Amazon portal is keyword-based, with products ranked based on relevance and whether they’re likely to sell.

Meanwhile, YouTube has more than two million users and Pinterest is a great place to get your brand noticed.

At Front Page, we’re well versed in SEO beyond Google. Give us a call about how we can work together to ensure your name and website are seen more widely.