Search Engine Hit Rates

I have recently started to take a lot more notice of the information that Google Analytics provides. One of the things I have been looking at is the referrals received from different search engines. Currently my stats break down as follows:

• google - 94.52%
• yahoo - 3.33%
• aol - 0.87%
• live - 0.45%
• search - 0.37%

Now we all know that Google is the behemoth of the search engine industry, and I expected them to be at the top. However I did not expect them to have a lead of over 90% over their competitors. I am starting to think that I have not given enough thought to optimising for other search providers.

So the question is, do my stats mirror those of others?

Two factors to keep in mind are:

• Google's commanding lead in market share of search users
• Google's favorable treatment of forums (user generated content)

It is extremely typical for our customers to report the vast majority of their search traffic to come from Google.

We would expect 60% of search traffic to come from Google, just based on their share of the market. The rest can largely be accounted for by the differences in how Google evaluates forums.

Check out:
Google Runs Away from Yahoo and MSN in Search Share | BNET Media Blog | BNET

natural/type ins, referring sites, and google make up 98% of my traffic.

yahoo, msn, aol, etc etc share the remaining 2%.

What you see is not uncommon.