Your Top Search Rankings at Yahoo

February 6, 2009 by Butterfly Filed under: SEO

It seems I now do this rant every single year when traffic

statistics are discussed in web industry news. Last week I

posted to my Reality SEO blog that referred traffic numbers are

the only statistic that webmasters should be concerned about when

looking at their search engine rank. I wrote about this last year

after ComScore Media Metrics statistics were relased discussing

Search Engine Queries generated by each search property.

http://searchengineoptimism.com/Google_refers_70_percent.html

In that article, I suggested to Microsoft as they developed

their own search technology that MSN search might consider

resisting the urge to keep searchers on their site by plastering

both PPC and “Sponsored Sites” above and below search results.

Google displays two “Sponsored Links” above organic results and

none below, along with Adwords ads along the right column.

Well now that MSN search has made its official debut, we can see

that they put three “Sponsored Sites” links both above AND below

their organic search results, along with those Overture (Soon to

be Yahoo Branded) PPC ads along the right side of the page. Not

bad visually, but it appears to be keeping visitors on the MSN

search site because they simply are NOT clicking through to

highly ranked sites according to closely watched traffic

statistics of several sites I monitor for clients.

I’ve been pouring over web stats for a half dozen clients

looking for traffic from MSN and it is missing in action. Even

though these sites rank well for targeted terms for my clients –

MSN is not delivering the traffic at all.

This has always been an issue for SEO’s and their clients and we

are puzzling this one over, looking for results from those top

rankings at both Yahoo and MSN as they seem to retain the

searchers no matter how well we rank the sites!

Yahoo has dropped dramatically, with referred traffic that used

to amount to over 5% of the visitors to client sites, it has

dropped as low as 1.5% of total referred traffic from search

engines. After a recent increase in referred traffic from Yahoo

search, we were hopeful it would stay high, but it wasn’t to be.

Rankings have not declined – Read That Again – Rankings have not

declined, just the referred traffic!

Google has gone up in referrals from foreign countries, including

foreign language sites. We used to see tiny amounts of traffic

trickle in from non-English language countries, but Google

country sites for Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, Spain,

Mexico and a dozen other language specific Googles have combined

to send more non-English referred traffic than the total coming

from (English) Yahoo Search!

The search world is getting very odd when great rankings at Yahoo

and MSN don’t equal referred traffic. This has always been the

case to a degree, but is getting extreme and very disturbing.

Google has always sent more traffic, with as much as 85% of

referred search traffic coming from English Speaking Google

variants in US, Canada, India, New Zealand, Australia, and UK

sending more traffic than both the US Yahoo and MSN.

What is the value of top rankings in MSN and Yahoo if those top

positions don’t bring traffic?

Zippo, NONE are coming from MSN Search even though we are better

ranked in several important search phrases for client sites at

MSN than at Google! This is serious and it’s a problem that we

must resolve. “Searches performed” statistics, like those

exhaustively researched by Bill Platt in a recent article

are absolutely meaningless if searchers don’t click through to

top ranking sites! What does this mean?

http://realityseo.com/2005/03/day-internet-search-engines-stopped.html

Even though I write a similar article each year, discuss this

topic on large discussion lists and mention it regularly in my

Reality SEO blog, I have yet to get honest answers from search

engine representatives at Yahoo or MSN. I did get a couple of

Yahoo Search managers to admit that more visitors stay on the

Yahoo site and continue to either PPC ads or to other Yahoo links

because “There is more of value to the searcher at Yahoo.” What

is of more value to a searcher than relevant search results?

I gave those Yahoo’s access to my traffic statistics and those of

clients so they could see that nearly 70% of my traffic and that

of clients was coming from Google – EVEN WHEN THOSE SAME SITES

RANKED HIGHLY IN SEARCHES AT YAHOO! No comment and no

explanations as to why, when they generate huge numbers of search

queries, that far fewer visitors click through from Yahoo search

results than do from Google search results.

One must assume that someone searching for something visits at

least a few of the sites that appear in the list of search

results, no? They sure do visit from Google in significant

numbers – consistently. But both Yahoo and MSN Search are failing

to send referred search traffic to sites ranked highly in

their search results. Why?

I highly recommend that all webmasters with access to statistics for

their own site look seriously at your traffic referred by Yahoo & MSN

for search phrases you rank well on. Do YOU have traffic referred by

Yahoo or MSN Search for your high ranking search phrases. Why not?