The entire SEO field is fixated on Google. It is all about improving your PageRank and getting listed in Google's search results. The other search players are secondary in the minds of the experts. And of course, this is with good reason. Google is the dominant force in the industry and not just because it is well know. It became well known thanks to its reliability and speed. But is the age of search engine parity upon us?

The Competition Makes A Push

Yahoo may have been in trouble for a while, but has been making a push as of late. It is has massive amounts of traffic and is beginning to leverage it. Ask has reinvented itself and even put on that strange marketing campaign with the Russian guy. But are those really sources of competition for Google?

Quite frankly, Yahoo is a bloated company that has overstretched its reach and Ask is just... silly (even after they dropped that Jeeves fellow). The interesting company, as far as search engine optimization is concerned, is Microsoft's Live.

Up And Coming Or Flash In The Pan?

Out of all of these potential competitors, Microsoft has the deepest pockets and the user base to tackle a search giant like Google. And honestly, I think that the Live search engine is quite good as far as results and its interface is concerned. Now, its stats are catching up with its usability.

Looking at the numbers for month to month growth for Microsoft's search engine, it was growing at a little over 13% from May to June. Then from June to July, they grew even faster, at nearly 18%. During those same periods, Google barely grew at all from May to June, while achieving only 8% growth from June to July. But as recently reported by Compete, Google has taken back the momentum. Nevertheless, this obviously gives us something to think about.

Google may not always be on top. Most SEO tactics are geared towards perfecting our results in Google. But just running a quick search on my own first name (J David), I didn't turn up until the second page on Live, while on Google I was in the second overall position. I also tried it for the phrase "best myspace overlays" and I was the first result in Google, while on Live I was on the 5th page! My point is that, while we can get away with things like that now, these tactics may end up biting us in the butt.

Google Is Still King... For Now

Pronet Advertising has declared that we are back to our regularly scheduled searching. Google is still the dominant engine, but competitors may be coming up fast. John Chow didn't put all of his eggs into the Google Adsense basket, so why are we doing it for their search engine?