Google Blues-Don't Forget Yahoo and Bing
Since I started blogging a couple of years ago I have built up what I thought was a pretty good relationship between myself and Google. All my sites featured in search engine results pages(SERP) and each site also had page rank. I have employed AdSense and made a modest monthly return that covers my costs and a little besides.
Recently however SERP's referrals from the big G have literally dried up overnight making me think I am in the rumoured Google bin. I am not sure why, I don't sell links, I don't do paid reviews and my content is all original, generated from my own grey matter.
Some have suggested duplicate content might be penalising me in Google's eyes, but the only way this is possible is that agitators are stealing my stuff, sucking in my feeds and recycling it. There is some evidence of this, as my work sometimes shows up highly placed in SERP's under a feed from an agitator site, OK it links to my own, but if the feed is a full feed like mine, who is going to bother heading over to my place to explore my site? Or for that matter click on my AdSense when the agitator usually has them displayed.
Well in order to fight back and remove my reliance away from Google, who lets face it don't really give a toss about a small time blogger like me, I have started to explore two of the other main players on the block when it comes to search engines, Yahoo and Bing both of whom have quite a lot to offer too.
Did you know for example that both these search engines have webmaster tools not unlike those provided by Google?
Well if you didn't its easy to set up an account and upload your site details along with an appropriate site map. For Yahoo you can start here with Yahoo Explorer and for Bing start here at their Webmaster Centre.
Even if you do well in Google searches its worth submitting your sites to both Bing and Yahoo and not just leaving it to chance whether you get listed in their search results. I fancy Google is getting a little big for its boots and that more people like myself will look for an altenative.
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5 comments:
You raise a good point - it's interesting the situation that Google's in and it's hard to understand how / why they do what they do.
I personally think that they're adjusting their search criteria regularly, so that people who are relying purely on SEO have to constantly change their SEO criteria - resulting in making it so much work to do SEO, so that less people are trying to make a business on only focusing on SEO.
Just a personal theory, however.
Hi Ed thanks for stopping by. I haven't really got the faintest clue about SEO, but the point you make may well be valid.
All I know for certain is that I am suffering when it comes to hits on my main blog.
Good grief, Mike, I didn't know this was your blog, too. I was at Malcolm and Ciejay's and just scanned Malcolm's blog roll and there was an interesting topic on Yahoo and Bing. And here I am. Thanks for the links above. I'll follow up.
I noticed recently I've been getting a lot of hits from Yahoo search. In fact, it's leaped from almost nothing 2-3 months ago to No. 2 to google.com (in a google sandwich with all the other national googles below).
cheers
rick
Cool. Have signed up at Yahoo and Bing. I don't really rate Yahoo but I do like Bing.
Rick yes I have too much time on my hands!! Since I got dropped by the big G I have had quite a bit of traffic from Y & B.
Emm every little helps!
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