Google vs. Yahoo

If your practice wants to generate dental patients through the search engines, which search engine is the best? The answer is you need to do well on both Google and Yahoo to be successful with your practice’s Internet marketing. In fact, you shouldn't stop with Google and Yahoo. MSN is a strong third choice and there are many other second and third tier search engines that also generate a lot of searches - and hence a lot of search results for cosmetic dentists who have a strong presence on them. The second and third tier search engines include AltaVista, AOL, Ask, A9, Lycos, HotBot, and more.

Now, getting back to Google and Yahoo. The consensus is that Google is more important, but it is close. The numbers vary depending on who you ask. I have seen numbers in the range of Google generating about 39% of the searches while Yahoo generates about 31%. That is probably close, but your guess is as good as mine. MSN comes in around 12%.

The latest battle seems to be about how big their indexes are. Yahoo just recently claimed an index database of over 19 Billion webpages, plus images, music, etc. Google, by comparison claims its indexed database is about 8 Billion webpages plus images, etc. Who really cares? There aren't that many dentists or dental practices in your market. The question is - are you indexed and how do you rank on both of these important search engines - to say nothing about MSN and the second tier search engines I mentioned above.

Dan Goldstein
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