Ok let me ask you this. How much of your traffic comes from MSN vs Google.

That is my point.

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Image Freak

I actually don't track what traffic comes from which search engine; I don't track my SERP ranking in search engines; I don't worry about pagerank.

99% of my traffic comes from word of mouth. It comes from my participation in Yahoo and MSN communities filled with people willing to purchase from me, from previous customers, or actual selling in the real world. In my retail business, I would rather have repeat customer than 1000 visitors a day who don't buy anything.

If I were to concentrate all my efforts on search engines, I would work with Yahoo and MSN because they have the repeat visitors who are more likely to do searches. I don't usually use Google myself, only as a last resort.

Word of mouth is good. Which comes with time no doubt. But early starters might as well get those 1000s of visitors which may help with word of mouth.

I know most people that I know who run sites have their traffic coming from google almost 90% of the time. I can say that for myself also.

Word of mouth is good, but putting all your eggs in one basket isn't. I don't watch SERPs much but I know what my targets are for visitors and I know google is the one that brings in the most traffic.

I like to keep myself envolved in all 3.

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Image Freak

I seem to be liking MSN myself too... after all PulseToday.com has 1st position for the keyword Marketing Forums in there :P

Could this be because both Yahoo and MSN until recently served Google search results?

Ah yes, looking back I must have made a typo somewhere. I meant to say that while they are the same page MSN has decided to make them two different pages, which is noteworthy.

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Good-Tutorials.com: RSS feed, baby! Now with hourly tutorials!
Ad Networks Reviewed: FastClick | Tribal Fusion | Casale Media

Micro$oft do have a foothold in everything they compete in and like someone said they have made some good products, the release of XBox and Halo / Halo 2 for example. But they're not competing with 'creative minds' as such, but more technology.

Yes they can invest more than Google, but do they have the research that Google have? Do they have the support by 'internet savvy' personel (Until they fix IE I doubt that). Like rex said, most traffic actually comes from Google, also you will find that except advertising, Google offers free services and products including GMail, which not even Micro$oft can compete with right now.

Micro$oft need to spend more time fixing their e-products (IE etc.) rather than competing with an SE God.

Note - Obviously a lot of the above was opinion orientated

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International Web Developers Network

Paul B. Riddick

I was just becoming almost satisfied with MSN search results when they decided to start from scratch. Hopefully they continue to refine their algorithym as it does need improving (but isn't all that bad).

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John Conde
Marketing Clueless...but trying

Yes. They're Microsoft. The people working there are, well, really bright. To imply that they have idiots coding their stuff is a bit off. Microsoft is becoming streamlined in regards to development, and I think they'll start chipping away at Google in the coming years (not that I want to see it happen).

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Good-Tutorials.com: RSS feed, baby! Now with hourly tutorials!
Ad Networks Reviewed: FastClick | Tribal Fusion | Casale Media

It's hard not to imagine MicroSoft making inroads against Google. Besides the large sums of cash to have to throw behind it, through their large network of partners they will have the ability to grab a large share of hearts and minds through sheer quantity of numbers. Kinda like the did with IE (although IE4 was ahead of NN4 in terms of capabilties). Microsoft has consistantly shown that when they want something they'll do anything to get it.

[ot]Nice avatar [/ot]

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John Conde
Marketing Clueless...but trying