There’s no doubt that if you ignore Google as a webmaster you will likely find yourself not getting much traffic to your website. Google is, after all, the No. 1 referrer for most sites. However, there are a few websites that report Twitter being No. 1. Those sites are a rarity so don’t think you can just go out and Twitter your way to heaven.
I’m not saying Twitter isn’t important. I’m just saying it hasn’t arrived at the same level of importance as Google.
But has Google perhaps overstayed its importance? Has the moment of truth finally come for the search engine?
Yesterday I blogged about a Hitwise report that still shows Google as the No. 1 website for most industries online. In fact, many industries rely on Google so much that their growth in traffic from October 2008 to October 2009 was in the double digits. And Google still has 70% of the search share overall.
Bing is up 7% to almost 10% of the search share overall. And I think it is quite possible that Bing could grow even more. But will it take share from Google? That remains to be seen.
Yahoo! sits at 16%. If Yahoo! and Bing complete their partnership then that would effectively give Microsoft a total of 26% of the overall search share. That would put them in the competitive game.
Yet traffic is the name of the game – targeted traffic, specifically. And it matters not where that traffic comes from. With sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube growing in stature, it’s quite possible that one of these sites could give Google a run for its money in the traffic game.
The percentage of category traffic for most industries in Hitwise’s report hover around 20%-30%. That leaves lots of room for other players to get in the game and stay there. When you consider that the percentage of category traffic from search engines is between 25% and 40% for the industries listed in Hitwise’s report, there is a huge playing field to roam around in for social media networks.
I think we could see a day in the near future where someone is giving Google a serious run for its money in the traffic generation game. Who do you think it will be?
