A report published by Pew Foundation showed that approximately 84% of all internet users use search engines. Going a step further, nearly half of all internet users use search engines frequently. These users turn to search engines for all kinds of information to help them in their daily lives. Many of them use search engines on a daily basis.

Because so many people turn immediately to search engines for information, it is important for any business to make sure it can be found. Unlike with a phone book, you do not simply pay for a spot. Every website that comes up on Google or any other search engine is given placement based on its relevancy.

If you would like to know more about search engines and how they work, contact The Search Engine Guys, LLC at 800-267-1704.

Google has long dominated the search engine market, but now that Bing has been introduced, people are starting to wonder whether or not it works better. The short and simple answer is: probably not. As search engines go, it's difficult to get much better than Google already is. On the other hand, every user has different needs and preferences.

Because of this, there have been several mashup sites for search engines.  One of the foremost is called Blind Search. Made by a Microsoft employee, the program lists three columns of search results from Google, Yahoo and Bing in a random order. You then vote on the column that is most useful to you, telling you which search engine fits you best.

There are several other sites out there as well performing similar functions. In the end, however, the search results on the sites tend to be fairly similar. From an SEO standpoint, this means that optimizing for Google is still the best choice.

If you would like to know more about search engine optimization, contact The Search Engine Guys, LLC at 800-267-1704.

According to comscore.com, Bing gained market share on Yahoo and Google. They gained .3% market share on each search engine between June and July. Most columns I have read are spinning this as a positive for Bing, and we can certainly see that angle. However, we do not view Bing as the Google Killer. In fact, we thought the initial bump from all of the hype and advertising behind Bing would lead to higher gains in marketshare.This reminds me a little of cuil.com (the so-called Google Killer), followed by Wolfram Alpha (the other, other Google Killer). A lot of hype and marketing, and then they slowly die off or become an insignificant player with respect to marketshare. We do not think Bing will become insignificant, but we do not see it gaining too much market share.

Although it is nice to see competition in the marketplace, the problem for these other search engines is that Google does a phenomenal job and returns results quickly. We personally think most of the efforts to improve search are pretty futile. When is the last time someone said something to the effect of, "Google search is terrible," or "I never find what I want?" That is the issue. We understand that everything can and will be improved, but I think that if someone is going to take on Google, they are going to have come up with a different spin on how they compete.

We think what may end up hurting Google is the fact that consumers may start to feel a little leary of the company having too much data on them, and becoming a little too big brother. If I was competing against Google, we would use the angle that we are not mining data from the individual user and that searches are private or deleted within 3 months, something to ease that worry. The battle for search in the future should be interesting and fun to watch.

Google has announced its new "Caffeine" architecture and has had testers using and reviewing. So far there have been both good and bad reviews, but one in particular stands out. Caffeine seems to be more of a changed algorithm rather than a totally new architecture. If this is true, it is really no different from the old Google.

While a final version of Caffeine has not yet been launched, some are speculating that it is more of a diversion to keep people from engines like Bing. Even so, however, placement on Caffeine is different and could affect SEO to some degree. For some searches, placement dropped several spots between the two types of Google, something that could happen with every change in algorithm on the old engine.

If you would like to know more about optimizing for google, contact The Search Engine Guys, LLC at 800-267-1704.

The possiblity of an Apple search engine is floating around since the resignation of Eric Schmidt from Apple's board of directors. Schmidt also works for Google, giving some credence to the idea. While Apple would certainly have an immediate customer base for its engine, it is difficult to say whether or not it could compete with Google.

Approximately 5% of the computer market is devoted to Apple and would go immediately to their engine, leaving Google. However, Google currently pays Apple to put a search bar in Safari. While this amount is not known, some say that it is enough to fund development of Mac OS X. Direct competition with Google would likely put a damper on those funds.

In the end, an Apple search engine would likely take more business from Microsoft's Bing than from Google. Even if it does become a contender, however, the search results will likely be very similar to Google's. This means that optimization aimed at Google would still work for the other engine.

If you would like to learn about search engine optimization, contact The Search Engine Guys, LLC at 800-267-1704.