Is Google really THAT important?

[footyfan]

Google provides <2% of my traffic. I don't see it as that important to me. I find that those people who search and get to my site are often misguided and looking for something else. I find it much better to exchange links with other related sites and get most of my traffic from one football related site alone. Anyone else have any experiences of poor traffic numbers from the search engines?

I've thought about having a paid link on Google, but I'm not sure how much more traffic this would give me, and it's expensive per click! Probably better to go with an affiliate company and pay other sites a smaller amount per click, rather than Google.

[compar]

Well Googles SERPs are not presently as relevant as they could be for some search terms. But generally I would say if people coming to your site from Google are not interested in your site them maybe you are optimized, or being found, for the wrong search terms or keywords.

[I, Brian]

Google has around 70% of the search engine traffic according to the BBC - others put it nearer 80%. As much as 50% is through the Google websites themselves, with the rest provided to portals such as Yahoo, AOL, Netscape, Earthlink, etc.

If your sites was fully optimised for Google you would almost certainly see a notable increase in visitor numbers.

[Johan007]

ironic now that Google is in power its results suck a little - just like politics!

Looksmart in my opinion is the best for the future. They may not have any money now but they have some super technology combining commercial with a free directory thats staffed and some very clever mass spider tool thingy for the future http://www.grub.org/

If you have broadband EVERYONE take a look at http://www.grub.org/ and take part.

[sem4u]

Google can provide as much as 85% of a website's traffic if you include Yahoo and AOL as well.

[Johan007]

yes buts not very healthy to have over a high amount because you have no repeat visitors (unless you are counting referrers only!)

Website traffic can tipple when a your newsletter is sent out or an advert in your local rag.

Above all a healthy site will have returning visitors who use a bookmark or type the url in. Think about your favourite sites… you don’t use Google search to access them.

[samer]

i get 30% of my traffic from google