On Friday comScore announced that Google still leads in the U.S. core search. I’ve done my own little research and have come to believe that the reason may have more to do with the fact that you have to search 10 times on Google to find an answer, where Yahoo can give you the answer within 5 searches. But, who am I to doubt the giants.

Yahoo and Microsoft’s share of core searches is up slightly, not enough to change how you optimize your websites, but enough to make many SEO gurus read their guidelines again. What is more interesting, but not surprising, is the fact that YouTube is joining Mysapce as a major search engine.

Core Search Results for June:
Google: 7.3 billion expanded search queries
Yahoo: 2.5 billion expanded search queries (up 8%)
YouTube - other Google sites: 2.3 billion expanded search queries (up 15%)
MSN-Windows Live: 1.1 billion expanded search queries
Myspace: 448 million (up 13%)
Facebook: 157 million (up 30%)

What does this mean to eCommerce Businesses?

The hardest part of being an SEO guru is trying to explain to webmasters why they need to optimize. The key to traffic is not jumping on the Google bandwagon. Take a look at those figures. For example, MSN’s behavioral targeting is divided into 18 groups: mobile users, Internet power users, gamers, movie watchers, new/expecting moms, parents, and several travel categories, auto buyers, and researchers. Google’s categories are roughly: health and medical, travel, shopping and classifieds, news, entertainment, business and finance, sports online video, social networking.

Take a look at your product. If you target expectant moms, then it might be a better idea to run a PPC campaign on MSN than Google. It may be a better idea focusing on MSN SEO than Google, as the search engine is already working to target your audience.

If you want to research your keywords and see where you should focus your SEO efforts then go to http://www.lemmefind.com/. Google’s first 10 searches are all product selling websites. Yahoo’s top 10 are educational and products. MSN offers a variety of forums/groups, government self-help websites, and videos.

Part of the research done to pick a keyword is to see whether you rank well with the competition. Do not make the mistake of thinking ‘I will be the only diaper service among Google’s high-end stroller lists, so I’ll get all the sales.’ It doesn’t work this way. You want to appear with similar services, and then out-sell them in your Title and Description lines.