Let’s take a look at the search engine landscape. The objective here is to understand where focus your marketing efforts.

Which search engines do people use?

1. 86% Google
2. 6% Bing
3. 5% Yahoo
4. 2% AOL
5. 1% Ask

These numbers have been averaged over the past 6 months (November 2009 through April 2010). We’ve not included the “Other” category because it’s less than 1% and these numbers have been rounded. Source: StatOwl

What’s the story on each?

• Google continues to grow and weave together it’s various search venues like Maps, Products, Images, Twitter, News. There’s no end in sight.
• Bing replaced Microsoft’s MSN/Live Search in 2009. It’s a little different, but still seems simple to influence. Bing tends to index new things very quickly.
• Yahoo’s natural search will soon be replaced by Bing. Microsoft has made a deal with Yahoo to replace Yahoo results with Bing results starting sometime in the near future. At that point, Bing will have about a 11% market share.
• AOL Search is powered by Google. The results are virtually identical. If you rank well in Google, you rank well in AOL Search.
• Ask.com has it’s own propriety search engine. Google supplies the sponsored results. It’s not big enough warrant your specific attention at this time.
• Mobile services providers continue to jump around on which search engine is default on smart phones.

What’s the best general approach?

If your target audience uses a specific mobile device – see which search engine they use on that device. Otherwise the best general approach is to focus natural search engine optimization efforts on Google first. You’ll inherit AOL Search ranking as a bonus. Once results are as high, review your ranking and opportunities with the next biggest Bing. Chances are, if you’ve executed your natural search engine optimization (SEO) well, you’ll already have a good headstart in Bing.