Is it Possible to Optimize for Every Search Engine?
Google loves well-aged sites. Yahoo loves meta-keywords. Live loves fresh content. And who really cares what Ask likes. (Just kidding…but seriously, who cares.)
With so many differences between the major engines, subtle though they may be, is it really possible to optimize for every one of them? To push matters further, is it even worth trying to optimize for them all? With Google taking the cake on search engine market share, is it worth worrying about the under dogs?
Take a look at the (major) differences…

Only Major Issues of Optimizing for Everything
- Generally, Google does not like meta-keywords; Yahoo does. There’s always been speculation as to whether Google finds meta-keywords spammy; perhaps a healthy balance could work here – something to test out!
- Using robots.txt vs. robots-nocontent, depending on who you want to optimize for.
Is it even worth optimizing for anything other than Google?
For the most part, I tend to focus entirely on Google. I check for indexed pages for a new site there first. I check PageRank before WebRank. I use nofollows and robots.txt, not robots-nocontent.
Maybe I’m just partial to Google; then again, isn’t everyone?