It's not often that I can truly compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges when looking at search engine stats. It's also not often that I rank #1 for a major keyword phrase for all 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live). I've got quite a few major phrases that aren't #1 across the board, but are scattered about at #2, #3, etc. But even one ranking down means you are no longer comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. And sure, I've got lots of long-tail phrases that are #1 across all three - everyone has that. But the traffic is so minimal for each of those phrases, that comparing stats isn't very trustworthy at that point. But if a phrase sends a million users/month, and it is #1 across all 3 search engines, I'd say the stats associated with that phrase will be pretty darn accurate.
Since I hit #1 for that kind of phrase across all three search engines this month, I thought it would be a great time to see just what percentage of traffic the search engines sent me. The results are glaring.
Google - 83.33%
Yahoo - 11.26%
Live/MSN - 5.40%
Lets look at that graphically.
This is when you realize that no matter how hard you might want to break away from Google, you see just how ridiculous that concept is. Unless you get lots of traffic from places other than search (which is always nice), Google has to play a large part in your traffic strategy - like it or not.