Keywords - Google vs Yahoo vs Bing.

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1.2K followers

The first search engine was called Archie (which is "archive" without the "v"). It was a pretty parochial affair, indexing a few FTP servers. The first REAL search engine was called Webcrawler, then came Lycos, which is probably the first one any of us can remember, along with Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Northern Light, AltaVista and Yahoo. When Google came along in 1994 and finally adopted Goto.net's idea of selling keywords in 1998, it was set to rule the Internet.

In fact, Google is rapidly reaching the point where it IS the Internet. Think of Google+, Google Authorship, your Google account signing you into YouTube etc. That's going to take some cracking for Yahoo, Bing and their coterie of smaller search engines..

I was inspired by a post by AnnieB to check out my keywords on Yahoo. The key phrase I'm on page one, number two on Google with, doesn't appear at all on Yahoo. I gave up looking. But the second of my keywords has me on page one, position one on Yahoo. Just as a safety check I looked on Bing to discover, guess what, that Bing also had me in position one, page one. Not surprising as they're effectively the same thing as Bing now powers the Yahoo search engine.

Now I'll let you into a secret. My first key phrase is four words long. My second key phrase is three words long, and is the last three words of my first key phrase.

That can only mean that NOBODY on Yahoo or Bing can be searching using my longest key phrase, but they are on Google, and Google has 60% of the search market.

So, if you choose a long key phrase for your business, and incorporate a good shorter key phrase within it, you may do well (as I do ) on both search engines. In my case, my long key phrase isn't sought by many, but it is in position two, page one on Google, and the phrase within it is on page two of Google and page one, position one everywhere else.

Check both phrases in the keyword tool(s). General speaking, you can expect that the longer a key phrase is, the fewer people will search for it. The phrase white-haired bloke who writes in north bristol will be typed by virtually no one, so I can rank myself in position one, page one in Google within hours. But this isn't always the case. As an experiment I chose a key phrase dog grooming in bristol, which has 203 searches per month, traffic of 35 and competition for the exact phrase of just 49. An ideal, almost perfect piece of low-hanging fruit.

So, you would imagine that by adding the word cheapest, to form cheapest dog grooming in bristol I would create an even lower-hanging fruit - not so: 164 people search for it, it gets traffic of 28, but has competition of 247.

Both key phrases are within the criteria we use, and both get searched by Google. but by incorporating a more popular phrase within a less popular phrase, you'll pick up all the traffic related to both. And although the shorter, incorporated phrase may not do fantastically well on Google, it may be exceptional on Bing and Yahoo, and they still cover 30% of the search market.

However you choose your keywords, always use them sparingly (once in the title if possible and once in the first paragraph), and use a selection of related phrases in your text. dog grooming in bristol may have the phrases dog shampoo, brushing, glossy coat, smelling lovely, hair cut and many others supporting it in your written text. Trust me, this works.

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Recent Comments

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For the cheapest dog grooming in Bristol, I'd choose "Woofingtons" - only for the name, even though it's only in position 5 with gugle. Very soon, I'll be up to 200+ revisions of my site. In other words, I haven't got a bloody clue what I'm doing! :( george

Good day Paul

Thanks for the read. I'll remember this and give it a go. :)

Ke'Aira

Thanks for sharing Paul.

Thanks for putting this up. As far as I have read, the latest google update has made it more 'intelligent' and so the increased importance of phrases related to your key phrase.

Yup. Read my blogs on Hummingbird and this one: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/paul-dean/blog/latent-semantic-indexing-why-it-matters for a full picture. Thanks for reading.

Thanks, I was wondering about this myself, I realize google has market share, but that still leaves millions of people to use Bing and Yahoo. While I have a hard time finding my things on google. I can be first page, first spot on Bing and Yahoo, using the exact same search.
The other thing that might help with Google is to make sure you have an image in your posts. I found(accidentally) if you do an image search for your keyword, many times there isn't nearly as much competition as when you do just a websearch . Now I try to make sure
I have an attractive but related image in my posts because that just adds another possibility of someone finding your site because those images are linked to your site.

Hi harvman - yes I too rank page one on Bing/Yahoo but struggle to get off page 3 on Google. So, do you add a caption to your images relating to your keyword? Jan

Haven't done that yet, might just try to see what it will look like. I know key words and description appear when you view image

Hey Paul,

Great post. That's a very good analysis on the subject.

Thanks for sharing,
Jim

Thanks for sharing. I still am not sure how to find my rankings on Google. I look at Google Analytics to see if I am getting visitors. Hopefully Kyle will reveal more through the training. Debbie

Hey Debbie,

Jaaxy.com (no affiliation) has a site rank tool that shows you where you are in your site for the keyword you want to check.

Best Regards,
Jim

Jim, I will check that. I do have my Jaaxy membership so I should put it to better use. Thank you.

Thank u for giving in depth comparison

Nice post. I remember the days of Webcrawler and Alta Vista.

Thanks for the reminder about being sure to use related terms. I have a bad habit of starting a blog post on one subject and ending it on something completly different lol. I`ll have to try a little harder to "reel it in." One strange thing I noticed is that content from my bootcamp site tends to rank better and get more hits from yahoo/bing while my fitness site does much better with google. A slightly different audience, maybe?

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