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When On-Page SEO Doesn’t Matter
January 18, 2011 By korbodo
Gerry McGovern’s article “How Google fails at SEO, and why it doesn’t matter” contrasts the on-page SEO of Google’s homepage to that of Yahoo’s, and makes the good point that Google’s success is not just about on-page SEO. Providing value to the searcher and answering their questions is more likely to help you attract, convert and retain a loyal following. But it got us thinking of some of the other factors we look at in SEO, and how Google stacks up to Yahoo and Bing on those fronts.
Google vs. Yahoo vs. Bing: Inbound Links
One measure is counting the number of roads that lead to Rome, or the inbound links. Using a few measures such as Yahoo’s Site Explorer, SeoMoz’s Open Site Explorer and Blekko’s /seo slashtag, we can see that Google completely crushes the competition.
| Google.com | Yahoo.com | Bing.com | |
| Yahoo’s Site Explorer | 2,043,383,285 | 1,449,256,115 | 50,423,427 |
| Google’s “link:” operator | 18,700 | 4,670 | 4,800 |
| SeoMoz’s Open Site Explorer | 45,741,998 | 9,620,352 | 1,421,268 |
| Blekko’s /seo slashtag | 47,844,678 | 3,964,300 | 2,336,509 |
Rankings for Search Engine Keywords
Another measure is to see how these sites rank for keyword phrases that people might use to find them. Using WebPosition Reporter, we created a keyword ranking report (use “rank#1″ as the password to view the details) that shows how the major search engines perform. Here is a summary:
| Google.com | Yahoo.com | Bing.com | |
| search engine | 4 | 10 | 2 |
| best search engine | 19 | not in top 50 | not in top 50 |
| top search engine | not in top 50 | not in top 50 | not in top 50 |
| search the web | 9 | 2 | 7 |
Now, low ranks for “top search engine” could be because the searcher is looking for an article or review and not an actual engine, and that article would most likely link to the engines, but it’s interesting nonetheless. We’ll run this report again to see if the results change, and let us know if there are other keyword phrases you’d like us to add in when we do!
