Should I Consider Industry Stats?
Jun 21st, 2007  by Jennifer LeClaire

Google accounted for 65.13 percent of all U.S. searches in May, according to Hitwise. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 20.89, 8.40 and 3.92 percent respectively. The remaining 49 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.66 percent of U.S. searches.

That doesn’t mean, though, that you can’t get qualified traffic from niche search engines, though. Be sure to check your web analytics reports to see where your traffic is coming from before you pooh-pooh the little guys.

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing May 2007 to May 2006 - Travel, News and Media, Entertainment and Business and Finance categories received double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

Again, that doesn’t mean search engines are the only way to drive traffic that leads to conversions. Take these reports with a grain of salt. They are helpful in understanding trends, but your site is uniquely your own. Treat it that way.