The search engine wars are over

Someone needs to break the news to Microsoft, Yahoo!, Ask, and even the venerable Yellow Pages. No one out there says they need to "Bing" something or other. Google has become a verb in our lexicon. And even though Yahoo! has been around longer, and even though Bing is getting decent reviews, more users Google topics on the web than all of the other search engines ... combined!.

Yesterday, Neilsen Reported December Search Rankings for the United States. Google was the search engine of choice for more than 67% of all internet queries, with over 6.6 million uses during December. Yahoo! came in a distant second, with about 1.4 million uses, accounting for just over 14% share. Bing and Live Search combined for just under a million searches. But that doesn't seem to justify the millions that Microsoft has invested in promoting the service. Especially when you consider that, back in June, Google's share was actually less than it was in December. Sharon Gaudin, a contributor over at ComputerWorld reports that Google's search engine market share was only 61% in Neilsen's June report.

The takeaway for me is that, when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO), don't bother with trying to improve results on any search engine besides Google. The war is over. Google wins. If the web is an important lead source for your business, then focus your energy and get your Google results right. And any SEO expert that wants to do otherwise is wasting your money.