Search Engines Differ More than You Think

It's easy to think of search engines as black boxes that are essentially all alike, with Yahoo, Google, Ask Jeeves and MSN Search all agreeing and returning similar results for just about any query. New research shows that this idea is just dead wrong, however. Search engine result overlap is actually quite small, and shrinking, according to a new study by released today by Dogpile and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University.

And this lack of overlap was seen in both organic search listings as well as sponsored listings, suggesting that there's still plenty of opportunities for search marketers to gain a significant increase in exposure despite increasing competition.

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