Are Yahoo and Bing Useless?

1. 76

   anasshadposted 13 years ago

   While I was in the forums, i saw a lot of hubbers complain about the effect of the Google Panda on their traffic and earnings. Some even so disappointed that they were thinking about quitting hubpages. I was wondering that Google is not the only search engine in the market. Google has strong opponents like Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo and Bing are also strong traffic providers. But do hubpages relies so much on Google that a tweak can become so serious? What is the role of Yahoo and Bing for Hubs and how much traffic can they provide? Are Yahoo and Bing completely useless?

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   1. 86

      Stacie Lposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I've learned to submit to other search engines to get traffic...you should also

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   2. 75

      Barbara Kayposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      I have noticed that anything I rank high on Yahoo is an extra long page. Even though I have a few pages that do well on Yahoo, I still get very little traffic from them compared to Google.

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2. 70

   Cagsilposted 13 years ago

   No search engine is useless if it draws any sort of traffic.

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3. 60

   thejeffriestubeposted 13 years ago

   Funny you mention that, Yahoo and Bing, as well as a few other places, are what's keeping me afloat while Google decides what it's doing today.

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4. 68

   skearposted 13 years ago

   Yahoo and Bing are not completely useless but they do not bring near as much traffic as Google does.
   
   According to NetMarketShare Google currently has over 80% market share in the search engine market.
   
   http://marketshare.hitslink.com/search- … px?qprid=4

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5. 77

   Greekgeekposted 13 years ago

   A very good question. There are other search engines out there, too: Ask, MSN, even good old Altavista and Lycos.  Not only that, but there are also international search engines like Yandex and Baidu which serve a huge chunk of the planet. I get searches from the latter (usually image searches, since few of their customers read/write English) on my own websites and Squidoo all the time.
   
   The problem is that Google has the lion's share of English-speaking web traffic, so without Google traffic, it's much harder to get traffic in volume. Moreover, the algorithms Bing and friends use to rank websites aren't that different from Google. If our Google traffic tanks, our Bing/Ask/Yahoo/MSN/Lycos traffic may tank, too.
   
   The problem is compounded by the fact that the search engine marketing industry treats "SEO" as synonymous with "optimizing for Google." We know much less about what factors the other SEs are looking for. I'm always on the hunt for information on how to optimize for other search engines besides Google-- it is the right question to be asking! I just haven't found many answers, and those I've found are usually several years out of date.

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   1. 78

      thisisoliposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Bing/Yahoo ranks in a very similar way to Google, the only difference is a manginitude lower of search numbers. The traffic is also very different, especially since the introduction of the mobile market.

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6. 75

   Richieb799posted 13 years ago

   I find that with my really popular hubs I get a lot of other traiifc from different search engines but they usually rank high in Google as well. For hubs that get small traffic from Google you wont get much from the others either.

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7. 58

   codehubposted 13 years ago

   yahoo and bing appear to rank pages differently to google, for one thing, they do appear to favour older pages, compared to google. yet this might change again

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8. 77

   psycheskinnerposted 13 years ago

   Most people still use google.

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9. 81

   WriteAngledposted 13 years ago

   I get barely any traffic from Yahoo and Bing.
   
   For my own searches, I use Google if I'm feeling lazy and know there are lots of relevant sites anyway, Google Scholar if I need sites that are academic, and DuckDuckGo if I want a proper search on non-academic sites.

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10. 60

    Mark Ewbieposted 13 years ago

    If I need to know anything I just find an SEO forum and post a query.  Saves bothering with Google, and gets me noticed.

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11. 56

    toygurusposted 13 years ago

    One thing I've noticed is that on Bing the age of the domain and page is weighted heavily. Right now most people are dependent on Google traffic.

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12. 61

    whoisbidposted 12 years ago

    Face the reality and don't waste your time with Yahoo and Bing for the moment. Many are still hoping that this will change but how it will happen is beyond me

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    1. 94

       melbelposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       That's incorrect. Yahoo and Bing are very worthwhile. While they do not bring in massive amounts of traffic like Google does, Yahoo and Bing users are much more likely to click ads.
       
       Very rough guide:
       Google works more on the pagerank of a site (the quality of the backlink), while Yahoo ranks your site based on the number of backlinks spread throughout the Internet.
       
       For example:
       Backlink from ebay.com is worth a lot, Google ranks you highly because you have one backlink from them, so let's say Google gives you 10 points (these 'points' are just made up for the sake of this post.)
       
       Yahoo sees your backlink from ebay.com and gives you 1 point. (so you're ranked lower in Yahoo.)
       
       You have backlinks from a handful of DIFFERENT domains, Yahoo gives you a point for each of those, thus giving you a higher rank.
       
       However, Yahoo does give authority backlinks a lot more weight than backlinks from some random article directory, so quality DOES matter. Quantity does seem to be Yahoo's focus though.
       
       And, yeah, not as much traffic, but my Yahoo traffic loves to click ads.

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13. 79

    Rising Carenposted 12 years ago

    I get about as much Bing traffic as google.co.uk traffic. (which is pretty darn good!)
    
    And about as much yahoo traffic as google.com.ph traffic.
    
    All of which definitely bring in a decent amount of searchers. While they may not bring in as much as the almighty google.com, they are by no means unworthy. Now, would I purposely try to rank for them? No. Simply because most I procrastinate enough when it comes to ranking for google, I don't need to procrastinate on trying to rank for more search engines. (Seriously. I don't backlink. Keyword research is as far as I'm willing to go.)
    
    However, for people who get little google traffic, it might be good to do some research on how to optimize for Bing and Yahoo (especially Bing.)
    
    Bing's going to be fairly popular. It won't beat google, but it will get lots of users. After all, bing is a default search engine on many computers; the bing toolbar is also a common default toolbar on new computers; and bing is on the xbox 360's search feature. I think bing is on other stuff too. Those who aren't that tech-savvy won't even try to change it to google and thus will end up using Bing just because it's there.
    
    It also helps that Bing had those awesome commercials to help spread the name (unlike MSN search...)

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14. 60

    Neil Hortonposted 12 years ago

    The way I see it, if I only got one visitor from Bing or Yahoo, it is a visitor I didn't get from Google.

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15. 77

    ALL4JESUSposted 12 years ago

    I have good luck with this...
    http://pingsitemap.com/

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    1. 79

       Rising Carenposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       That's for XML sitemaps. Fine for your own website, I suppose, but useless to us hubbers.

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16. 69

    jainismusposted 12 years ago

    I have seen that traffic to my Hubpages comes mostly from Google, and Yahoo & Bing are far behind in sending traffic to HubPages.

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17. 59

    thediggerposted 12 years ago

    I think traffic from every place is important and more important is free traffic. Yahoo and MSN is the second and third popular search engines. So we should also try to rank high in these search engines then only we can notice few relevant traffic to our website.

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18. 94

    melbelposted 12 years ago

    From what I've seen, users from Yahoo are MUCH, MUCH more likely to click my ads than visitors from Google.

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19. 60

    Randy Godwinposted 12 years ago

    I've seen my Yahoo and Bing traffic rising lately, often surpassing Google's.  I hope they kick Google's asp! 
    
                                       

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