10 replies to this topic

[josh1r]

Hi! My site is #1 on both MSN and Yahoo for a search of italian charms.

I get about 56% of my traffic from MSN, 40% from Yahoo and 4% from other (Dogpile, Altavista...)

Is that 56/40 ratio roughly what everyone else gets (for those of you with rankings that similar in both Yahoo and MSN)?

Also, I'm finally ranked in Google, just over 100 for Italian Charms and just outside top 10 for wholesale italian charms (not great but a lot better than being outside the top 500 just a couple of weeks ago!!). For those of you who have a similar ranking in both MSN and Google or Yahoo and Google, what is your traffic breakdown like? I'm just trying to figure out how much more traffic I may get if I continue to move up in Google.

Thanks!!

-- Josh

Edited by Jill, 05 May 2004 - 04:12 PM.

[Randy]

My opinion is that it depends greatly upon the site and who it appeals to Josh. And from admittedly very recent numbers, there seems to be a shift happening with the average surfer.

I have several sites that rank pretty much the same in all of the big three. Some I get more traffic from Yahoo! Some I get more traffic from MSN. Some I get more traffic from Google.

Honestly I can't put my finger on one single thing. The only thing I can say is that the B2C sites seem to bring in more traffic from MSN and Yahoo!. And the conversion-to-sale ratio from MSN users has always been pretty high, but there seem to be a lot more people using it these days. Yahoo! traffic on my B2C sites is usually up there with MSN or just a bit more, but the CTS numbers are a little lower. Google traffic and CTS has been lagging from my historical data since right around the beginning of the year.

B2B sites tend to do pretty well on Google (both traffic and CTS) with Yahoo! coming in a close second on the traffic side of things. The Yahoo! CTS ratio for my B2B sites tends to be a little less than Google.

That's the only correlation I can see. The type of searcher. Yahoo! seems to have a better rounded clientele than either of the other two, but you need more traffic to convert the same number of buyers. Of course that could just be me, so I wouldn't put much stock in the theory. I know I don't.

[Dyan]

My most current stats: 51% -- MSN; 35% -- Yahoo; and golly........ a whopping 2% -- Google. LOL

However, I noticed the other day that Google has found significantly more of my pages than a couple of months ago. I'm not sure yet what that will mean (if anything), but it was interesting to see. In fact, from what I can tell, they've spidered fairly deep considering my low number of incoming links (according to Google; I have more in reality) and an average page rank for my site. Even so, and assuming that I read that allinurl thingy correctly, google has definiately grabbed more pages. A lot more, in fact.

[josh1r]

Thanks for the input everybody! I've got a new question if I may:

I know that Google fluctuates a lot, but my site, which finally got ranked around 100 is now completely out of the rankings again. I haven't changed my site much at all the past few months (just a few tweaks here and there, and nothing has changed at all the past few days), so any thoughts as to why I go from out of top 500, to 100, to out of top 500 again in a matter of days? Does anyone see anything on my site that looks 'bad'?

Thanks!

-- Josh

Edited by josh1r, 06 May 2004 - 07:56 AM.

[josh1r]

Hmmm... I just noticed that while my main site (italycharms.com) dropped out, another site of mine (italycharms.biz) moved up from out of top 500 to #97 (for a search of 'italian charms'). The sites are similar but not nearly similar enough (in my opinion) to confuse Google into thinking they are the same and only listing one. In addition, the .com has PR5 and 65 backlinks while the .biz has PR4 and only 15 backlinks. So I can't figure out why they'd list the .biz vs. the .com (the .com also has a lot more information...)

I also noticed that the .com is now ranking highly for 'wholesale italian charms' ('italian charms' is meant to be my main search term). Does the .com appear to be geared too much toward 'wholesale'? I'd hate to remove that keyword since I rank #1 on Yahoo and MSN for both 'wholesale italian charms' and 'italian charms', but I'd like to get back to being on Google for 'italian charms'.

If you feel I'm too optimized for wholesale italian charms vs italian charms I'd greatly appreciate any help in fixing that. I've run a few free KDAs and nothing looked too different than my competitors who rank highly for both search terms.

Thank you very much for any thoughts.

Regards,

-- Josh

p.s. Jill, is it ok to list my URLs above in this instance? Thanks!

Edited by josh1r, 06 May 2004 - 08:19 AM.

[Dyan]

In my opinion, trying to do anything with Google is like ........... well, like doing something into the wind. If you get my drift. *grins*

So I wouldn't give up whatever it is that you are doing that MSN and Yahoo like in the hopes of getting Google. So the advise that I give and try to follow is what the experts here often say.

Build a great site for your viewer, put in common sense SEO techniques and plan for the long run. Because I think trying to tweak for Google can prove to be a totally frustrating endeavour.

[Randy]

I concur with Dyan.

Josh, you can't make any informed decisions, especially where Google is concerned recently, based upon 1 or 2 days (weeks?) emperical evidence. They're tweaking things far too much.

Could they have picked up the dupe? Sure, it's possible. Why do you have a .com and a .biz selling the same thing anyway?

[josh1r]

Thanks guys. I know not to base anything on near-term Google fluctuations (and I know I try too hard and worry too much about getting on Google, but it's just that I hadn't been listed, ever, while I've been #1 on yahoo/msn for months now. So when I finally got on Google at around #100, I figured it was the start of something good, that they finally picked up my site. Then when it disappeared a day or 2 later I wondered if I had done something 'wrong' to make them remove it. I thought i might have been blacklisted for having linked with some link farms a while back (which were removed thanks to advice from this forum), so I was very excited when I finally got ranked.

The .biz site is really just a 'test' site. I don't really count on it for anything important. I should just set up a 301 redirect except Doteasy doesn't allow those (unless I pay more, which I probably should). I'll probably just use a meta-refresh one of these days, but for now i'll leave it as is since it does rank well on Google.

Thanks again,

-- Josh

[Dyan]

If it makes you feel any better, I'm much farther down in Google than the 100's. I can't even FIND my site most of the time. But I'm almost always in the top 20, frequently top 10 and occasionally in the top spot for my area (which has a LOT of competition) in both MSN and Yahoo.

It's like apples and oranges, I guess.

[torka]

If you haven't already, you might want to take a look at the article I mentioned here.

Apparently, there's less overlap between the various search engines' results than people might have expected, so it's not surprising that there would be significant differences between MSN, Yahoo and Google results...

--Torka

[josh1r]

Thanks for all the pointers everybody (in this post and others). I've finally gotten (and I don't want to jinx this) fairly stable within the top 10 of Google to go along with my top Yahoo and MSN rankings for 3 of my top keyword phrases.

In case you are curious, here's my traffic breakdown:

40% MSN
25% Yahoo
25% Google
10% Other

Thanks again!

-- Josh