Why Yahoo appeals to the 50+ demographic:

• Yahoo is a old fashioned portal which is a gateway to all kind of different content on the internet.
• As a home page it has a good set up in advance for its users and do not require or push for customization.
• People who are over 50 years were “leading edge” internet users about 10 – 15 years ago set up a yahoo email account when Yahoo was THE dominant search engine at that time and they still use that same account today.
• In a research carried out by  Cowan & Co, revealed that 57% of respondents were visiting Yahoo home page because they go there to check their Yahoo mail. Yahoo’s engagement with users remains high; 64% of respondents go to Yahoo.com at least once per week. In addition, Yahoo Mail is still growing (although Gmail has a much greater share of new personal email accounts).
• People over 60 are more often using the Internet for community and entertainment they aren’t using the web to “search” for data and information to support their career.

Google: a dominant “search” engine and online toolbox

• Google is the dominant search engine which is taking over the market share with over 67.3% in December 2009 across all demographics.
• Google gives its primary focus on “search” finding the information and data people look for, most often for research, work or career development.
• Google has loads of customizable tools such as iGoogle, Google Docs, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps etc.
• In the same research by Cowan & Co cited above, they found that “79% of 22- to 25-year-olds use Google as their primary search engine, compared to 63% of total respondents. Google usage is skewed toward younger demographics, high-income households, users with college and graduate degrees, and mobile Internet users.”

Bing: uncertain waters yet strong possibilities for the 50+ demographic

• According to the Cowan & Co study, Bing was chosen as a primary search engine by just 1% of 18- to 25-year-olds and 4% of 26- to 34-year-olds. Bing’s highest penetration rate is in the 55-and-over demographic at 10%.
• About 40% of respondents are not aware of the Bing brand. They are simply finding the tool because it is the default search engine in Internet Explorer which as of December 2009 is still the browser of choice (or default) of 50% of Internet surfers. Older users are much more likely to stick with the default browser than to seek out alternative software.
• Even after the huge media-blitz by Microsoft to promote Bing (spending perhaps as much as $100 million), its market share dropped in December 2009 to 9.9% from a high of 10.7% the previous month.

The question is, even if Yahoo and Bing have a smaller piece of the pie, if their user base matches your customer base, you’ll want to make sure you have a presence in their text and image indexes, directories, and perhaps even paid search. There are specific tactics you will need to take to accomplish this. Extreme web search engine consultants Sri Lanka are ready to offer you the guidance and coaching you need – just get in touch!

A Greasemonkey script automates this URL generating process by replacing all the links to PDF, PPT and TIFF files from a page inside Googles Doc Viewer. If you want to use this script you have to install Greasemonkey in Firefox or use a dev build of Google Chrome. It should also work in Opera, Safari + GreaseKit and Internet Explorer + IE7Pro.

It will be really great in future when Firefox, Chrome and other major web browsers allow users to associate different content types with web services, allowing web surfers to open KML files in Google Maps, iCal files in Google Calendar or Microsoft Office files in Google Docs.