Google isn’t for everyone

For most web-orientated corporations, organizations, and ministries (mine included) Google is a dominant consideration for marketing and web development. It’s certainly the biggest search engine, the gold-standard for finding information on the internet. Yet there’s still Yahoo! and MSN and a few others — and while they aren’t as large or powerful as Google, people are still using them.

I’ve wondered for a while if internet ministry may be giving Google to much focus.  Google may have the largest audience of any web audience, so it’s natural to think about how it can be leveraged for our mission. But if we’re trying to reach everyone… what about the other search engines and portals?

Consider this: Yahoo! may have a larger presence with some key groups we’d want to reach than Google. I came across this post from Hitwise [via TechCrunch] that gives credibility to my thought.

The top left quadrant shows that Yahoo! excels with demographics that weould want to be reaching. In addition, Yahoo! tends to reach a younger audience.

I’m not saying that Google isn’t a major consideration in web ministry. Only that it’s probably not going to reach some audiences we’d like to reach as well as Yahoo! and, perhaps, other web portals.