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I'm in Curacao, why do I need Google?

^{15-12-2008, S. Opschoor}

Why do I need to be present in a search engine results? Do people use them? And why should you focus on Google? Are they the best?

Questions which need an anwser in order for a business to see relevance in focussing on Internet Marketing and advertising. In this article we provide some interesting numbers.

First we will look at which search engine is most popular.

Market share in US
1. www.google.com 71.86%
2. search.yahoo.com 17.74%
3. search.msn.com 4.16%
4. www.ask.com 3.53%
_{Source: www.hitwise.com, oktober 2008}

Market share Netherlands
1. Google 94%
2. MSN live 4%
3. Ilse 1%
4. Yahoo <1%
_{Source: www.comscore.com, january-april 2008}

As you can see the top markets for businesses on Curacao can be most effective through Google. If you design your website as Google-friendly as possible the other search engines follow with no extra effort.

Now let's look at the local Curacao market.

Top websites in Netherlands Antilles
1. Google (search engine)
2. Windows Live (search engine + e-mail)
3. YouTube (video database)
4. Yahoo! (search engine)
5. Microsoft Network (MSN) (search engine + e-mail)
6. Facebook (social networking)
7. Hi5 (social networking)
8. Kitatin.com (social networking)
9. Google Nederland (search engine)
10. Tagged (social networking)
11. Wikipedia (encyclopedia)
12. Hyves.nl (social networking)
13. Myspace (social networking)
14. Hepa.an (free sms-service)
15. Itrack.it
_{Source www.alexa.com, january 2009}

When you look at the list above, there are two main conclusions:

• Get your website within the first 10 results of a search engine on relevant key words
• find a way to advertise within the social networds (banners, start a social group, etc)

More information on how to do this? Click here