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> A website which does not get at least 70% traffic via organic search seriously under-performs (and for good search engine optimized sites the truth is more in

by zepolen 16y ago

> A website which does not get at least 70% traffic via organic search seriously under-performs (and for good search engine optimized sites the truth is more in the 90% plus area). I really don't agree with this. If you depend on organic search to bring you users then: a) you're at the will of the search engine's algorithm which can change at any time (like Google just did) b) it means your users aren't the loyal type, and they will easily forget you Take Reddit for example; If tommorow Google removes them from their index, I doubt much will change in terms of visitors since they have loyal users who know them by name.

franze 16y ago
Take Stackoverflow.com as an example http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/trouble-in-the-house-of-google.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/trouble-in-the-hous... (88.2% Google referred traffic)
- beaumartinez 16y ago
  > 88.2% Google-referred traffic. I don't think that's a "pure" statistic. Perhaps StackOverflow users rely on Google returning StackOverflow answers? I know I do; for example, I often append stackoverflow to my programming queries because I know Google will give me StackOverflow answers. Although the referral is Google, I am forcibly limiting results to include only StackOverflow.
  - franze 16y ago
    even if they would clean it up (add every query with a brand term to a separate segment) i would be very very very surprised if it would be below 70%
  - homofaber 16y ago
    SO is designed so that google is their home page. Joel Spolsky talked about that, year or two ago, in one of episodes of SO podcast.
daleharvey 16y ago
yeh that comment bothered me as well, different site have different targets. Some commercial sites are aspirational, they want their their customers to know they exist out side of some impersonal google search, some places are more your home on the internet that google is, some want to be found through your friends. I would be surprised if apple, facebook, zynga are in that 90% category and its very hard to say they are "under performing" Its self important generalisations like that that give SEO as an industry a bad name.

by zepolen 16y ago

franze 16y ago

Take Stackoverflow.com as an example http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/trouble-in-the-house-of-google.html http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/01/trouble-in-the-hous... (88.2% Google referred traffic)

beaumartinez 16y ago
> 88.2% Google-referred traffic. I don't think that's a "pure" statistic. Perhaps StackOverflow users rely on Google returning StackOverflow answers? I know I do; for example, I often append stackoverflow to my programming queries because I know Google will give me StackOverflow answers. Although the referral is Google, I am forcibly limiting results to include only StackOverflow.
- franze 16y ago
  even if they would clean it up (add every query with a brand term to a separate segment) i would be very very very surprised if it would be below 70%
- homofaber 16y ago
  SO is designed so that google is their home page. Joel Spolsky talked about that, year or two ago, in one of episodes of SO podcast.

daleharvey 16y ago

yeh that comment bothered me as well, different site have different targets. Some commercial sites are aspirational, they want their their customers to know they exist out side of some impersonal google search, some places are more your home on the internet that google is, some want to be found through your friends. I would be surprised if apple, facebook, zynga are in that 90% category and its very hard to say they are "under performing" Its self important generalisations like that that give SEO as an industry a bad name.