WEB- A new eye-tracking study performed by the folks over at Explido has ranked the “big three” (Google, Bing, Yahoo) against more specialized engines (WolframAlpha, Collecta, OneRiot), and a few foreign up-and-comers (Baidu,Yandex). This is key data for Businesses in Portland that are monitoring their SERP rankings.
The breakdown of the study is that the foreign sites are essentially using a “Google classic” format, though we expect to see more search-centric categorization in the future, along the lines of the big three. Google continues to dominate in search results, but the Bing and Yahoo universal results seem to fare just as well. A lot of the favoritism towards the big three appears to be user familiarity, so the social engines may become more popular in the future. Utilities like Wolfram Alpha continue to struggle in the consumer market, but are quite useful for generalized information, which is the stated goal of the program.
All of this generally points toward an expected increase in topical search, with increasingly compartmentalized streams of information designed to satisfy the educated consumer. Search marketers certainly will have their hands full for the forseeable future!