I've opened up my vault of collected data again to see what's new with organic results from search engines. Although I started collecting search engine data back in 2003, I didn't keep it organized until 2010. The table below shows five sampled month of data spanning back through October 2010. These are measurements of how people are organically referred from search engines to retail jewelry store websites.
| Search Engine | Aug 2013 | Mar 2012 | Feb 2012 | May 2011 | Oct 2010 |
| 81.48% | 83.46% | 82.49% | 85.39% | 69% | |
| Bing | 7.91% | 6.92% | 7.63% | 5.94% | 10% |
| Yahoo | 7.75% | 7.62% | 7.87% | 6.41% | 17% |
| Ask | 0.51% | 0.62% | 0.58% | 0.48% | 1% |
| AOL | 1.05% | 1.10% | 1.11% | 0.95% | 2% |
The extra 1.30% that I didn't show in the table accounts for the search engines AVG, Comcast, Babylon, Yandex, Search, Conduit, and Rambler. As far as you're concerned, these are inconsequential to your business.
I find it interesting that the Blekko search engine still doesn't appear anywhere in the results list. Blekko launched back on November 1, 2010 and they inspired me to start tracking search engine results as detailed in this Nugget from back then.
According to my results above, you can see how Google jumped 16.39% in usage during the 6 months between October 2010 and May 2011, but they've been slowly declining since. The 81.48% that they have obviously maintained their position as the market leader.
Bing and Yahoo have struggled to gain popularity among jewelry buyers. Combined, they have 15.66% of the market share.
Now let's break this data up a little more to see our organic results for mobile visitors. According to yesterday's Nugget 35.85% of the total visitors to jewelry sites are using mobile. Here's how that breaks down for search engine usage:
33.40% of Google organic visitors were using mobile.
16.76% of Bing organic visitors were using mobile.
42.97% of Yahoo organic visitors were using mobile.
11.59% of Ask organic visitors were using mobile.
2.82% of AOL organic visitors were using mobile.
I tested a few Google searches on the iPhone and Android to see if there was a difference in the results. Although the results in the searches were the same, their order was slightly different for each one.
Now that you have this data, you have to come up with an actionable plan for the holiday season. Here's what I'm thinking:
1. Don't worry too much how your website is ranking in Bing and Yahoo. Follow Google's Basic SEO Tactics and you should appear in Bing and Yahoo without worry.
2. Google your store name from your desktop and from your smartphone. Fix anything you see wrong in both results.
3. Do a Google search for your best ranked keyword phrase on your desktop and on your smartphone. Again you need to fix anything you see wrong.
One final thought for today's Nugget... As you contemplate hiring an SEO company to improve your website you should listen carefully to what they tell you. Don't let them fool into spending more money for better ranking in Bing and Yahoo because that ranking will take care of itself-- as long as you are properly ranked in Google.
