• Search Engine Land, Friday, January 26, 2007 11:30 AM

Search guru Danny Sullivan writes that search marketers should shift their approach from Google first, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, et al second, to Google first, social media search engines second, and the rest, third.  

What are social media search engines? Sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit. Why do they matter more to publishers than search's entire second-tier? Because the Web 2.0 blog receives most of its traffic from Google organic, followed by direct URL entries, to referrals from Digg.com, Google direct, BBC (randomly), Net Vibes, StumbleUpon and Reddit. Yahoo was 10th, but its referrals came from MyYahoo, not Yahoo Search. 

Sullivan says other sites report that Google is by far their search traffic leader. This is strange when you consider that there aren't that many differences in the way engines rank pages, but Google provides traffic through other ways, too, most notably Google News and Google Blog Search.

But surely Yahoo Search is a bigger driver than little Digg.com? Not necessarily, because Digg's tech-savvy user base is similar to that of TechCrunch. Plus, like-minded people group together at the site to vote on the best stories, resulting in a greater likelihood of being picked for relevant sites like TechCrunch.    

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