Most people do all their online searches on Google, Bing or Yahoo, which begs the question…
Is it worthwhile to register my website in Christian search engines?
According to comScore, in November 97.6% of all desktop searches were done on the big 3 search engines – Google, Bing and Yahoo. Factor in Ask (1.4%) and AOL (1%), and 99% of desktop searches were done on the top 5 search engines, leaving dozens of small and niche-specific search engines dividing up the other 1%.
That might lead one to assume it’s just not worth the time to register a website in lots of small search engines that get comparatively little traffic. But that would be a bad assumption. Here are…
5 Good Reasons to Get Listed in Christian Search Engines
1) 1% of 2 Trillion is still a lot of searches. Google reported back in May that it alone processes more than 2 trillion searches a year. So, even if the Big 5 serve 99% of searches, that 1% of searches not handled by the top search engines is a whopping 20 billion searches a year… that’s 20,000,000,000
2) Christian search engines have a more focused audience. Only about 1/3 of Americans are practicing Christians, so it’s likely of the 2 trillion searches serviced by Google only about 1/3 of them are made by Christians. But it’s likely that the vast majority of people using Christian search engines are Christians.
3) Church search engines have an even more focused audience. There are a handful of search engines online that only list churches. You can be sure, the people using these search engines are totally focused on one thing – finding a church. If you manage a church website, you won’t find a more focused audience than that.
4) Christian search listings appear in Google search results. If you search Google for “churches in Ames, Iowa,” in the organic search results (below ads and the local 3 pack) you’ll see the #3 result is a page in ChurchFinder.com listing churches in Ames and the #4 result is a page in ChurchAngel.com listing churches in Ames. Listings on these pages are not just getting the scraps of the 1% of searches not serviced by the Big 5, they’re getting in on those people searching Google.
5) Links in Christian search engines boost your secular search rankings. Ever since Google launched 2 decades ago, it has used links as a major search ranking factor. That is still true today and true for Bing and Yahoo as well. The more links to your website from quality sites, the better your search rankings. Even if no one ever finds your listing in a Christian search engine and clicks through to your site, the link and resulting boost in rank your site gets on other search engines makes the listing worthwhile.
The bottom line is… Yes, Christian search engine registration is valuable for the visitors and better search rankings it produces.
Invest the time to visit Christian and church search engines and filling out registration forms, or if you’d like to save time and make sure it gets done right, OurChurch.Com offers a Christian Search Registration service.
We also include Christian search engine registration in all the Website Bundles we announced yesterday.
Discussion
- Is your website listed in Christian search engines? Why or why not?
1 Comment
Hmm, very useful service, the registriation suit for church websites I think 🙂 Maybe very powerful 🙂