Comscore released their October 2009 search engine rankings this week. The results were a roughly similar increase in searches for both Microsoft's Bing search engine, and Google's search engine - all at the expense of Yahoo. According to Comscore, Google still leads in percentage share of searches with 65.4%, followed by Yahoo at 18%, then Bing at 9.9%. This is relatively good news for Bing which is up from 9.4%.
The percentage jump for Microsoft was rather impressive, but to really make headway in the long run, Microsoft needs to start to cut into Google's share - and most experts just don't think that Bing is a "Google-Killer". It is a nice search engine, and you should definitely try Bing out if you haven't already. It provides results comparable to Google - solid, reliable search engine results.
How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?
You really need to know where to focus your time and effort, and statistics like these will help you with your strategy. If you truly are advertising locally in the Denver metro area, you'll want to start with Google AdWords and focus most of your time and effort there - since the lion's share of the searches do occur on Google.
Should I even be concerned placing ads for my Denver business on Yahoo and Microsoft?
Probably.
Once you have your Google strategy down, then move on to the other search engine advertising platforms over at Yahoo and Microsoft. A great reason for eventually trying out Yahoo and Microsoft is that many people find that the cost per click is much less, and their conversion rate is often times higher. But for sheer volume, you really need to be advertising in Denver metro using Google AdWords.