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Getting hung up on Google page 1? Sometimes, it doesn’t really pay off. Sometimes a Yahoo page 1 result does, though. While high Yahoo ranks won’t give you a spit in the ocean’s results of a high Google rank, it just might actually convert more sales in the long-run.

There’s one thing I’ve been noticing for service-based businesses: they tend to convert at a much higher rate on Yahoo than on Google. Why? My last job was in the legal field, and conversions were being tracked through a sales CRM system, as well as Google Analytics. It turned out that our organic and paid traffic from Yahoo converted twice as much as it did in Google. My current job is in the education industry, and has identical results: an average day will bring about 70 Google conversions, and about 120 Yahoo conversions.

Why Doesn’t Everyone Default to Google?

There can be several reasons that show why this happens. Who is your audience? What is their demographic (especially age and gender)? Remember how new laptops and desktops came pre-loaded with garbage-ware, and internet browsers that point to MSN.com as their home page? People have been subjected to that for years. Perhaps they never bothered to learn how to change their default home page in a browser, and have simply gotten used to MSN.com as the years went by, making it be their top choice.

The same for Yahoo – it was everyone’s website of choice in the 1990s, B.G. (Before Google). It became a household name. Just like how I still use Mapquest instead of Google Maps — regardless of the fact that Google Maps is better — I’m a stubborn brand-loyal Mapquest user. Hell, I used to have a co-worker who only used Dogpile for her search engine. Why?! Who the hell knows.

If your audience consists of parents, the elderly, or others who aren’t hip to the modern-day internet, the chances are that they’re still using a lesser-visited browser platform, too. There’s only one way to find out, and that’s by tracking conversions using the trio of Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter. Remember, a conversion is any action you specify – it doesn’t have to be a “unit sold.” It can be a forum registration, a visit to a specific page, or a download of a file or PDF. Set this parameter, let a month or two go by, and see which search engine is converting for you.

Personally, I feel that many internet marketers use Google to see what their competition is up to, virtually ignoring the other two biggies. Beat them to it, and go for the easier goal of getting at the top of a Yahoo or Bing SERP. After all, selling more products sure beats getting more worthless page visits.