Our experience has been nearly equal treatment from each of the Big Three. We have no problem ranking in all of them, and ranking early on, including Google.
Google used to be much slower than the other two. Then we figured out why, and corrected it. That correction removes the 'sandbox' that so many webmasters talk about.
There is no sandbox in serps, only in abilities, contrary to the popular theory, and industry statements. You have to understand the sandbox. It is not a penalty. The 'sandbox' is percentages gone wrong. It is possible to change the percentages, from day one, and to even the playing field, even against the 'longevity' factor, if you understand how percentages affect your rankings.
The best way to figure out how to rank in all three for yourself is to pick any topic:
1. Search for that keyword or keyword phrase in each engine.
2. Look at the description in the listing each engine displays
3. Look at the source of each page listed. We are not stealing code here, only using use it for research purposes. The code of any one page or even many pages, if you only 'copy' it, will not help you long term. You need to understand why that code works, so you can use those principles to create your own code. That code works for that page, because of that page's big picture, combined with the page's percentages in relationship to other pages and sites. The big picture of any given page is not the same for other pages. But, the PRINCIPLES are identical.
4. Look at the cache.
5. Document the Alexa ranking, by day, week, and quarter of each of those sites you are monitoring.
Then ask yourself these questions:
1. What similarities do you see in the description and on the page?
2. Where, where, where, where... yes WHERE is the content displayed in the description, and highlighted in the cache, found EXACTLY on the page? (major key point)
3. How does 1&2 on any one site, compare to any other sites?
4. What things are common within 1&2 above to ALL those sites in the top 10.
5. How does the Alexa ranking for day, week and quarter change between the sites you are monitoring, and how does that relate to the serps? What is the Alexa of the #1, #10, #20, and #30 ranked sites at Google? at Yahoo? at MSN?
Alexa is an outstanding tool, if you know how to use it. Most webmasters take the tool at face value, and find it of little value. That is a mistake. There is information deep within the tool, that has the very key to ranking success, across all engines, that you are looking for. It is your best tool for percentages research, that crucial 'share of market' percentage specifically.
What you are looking for are common threads that connect all the ranking sites, in all the engines. Naturally, this would not include things like longevity and inbound links. You are merely looking for the 'obvious'... those things seen with the naked eye, that actually exist on the pages, and in the percentages you chart from Alexa.
The Alexa percentages are not just the ones you see on the pages for each site. You have to chart your own that compare all sites within the industry. By 'all', I don't mean 'every', I mean all those who are at your level, or at the level you wish to achieve. (top 30)
You will see throughout this forum posts by users who have been on top for years, many years, and suddenly they drop off the face of the earth. The normal response to that is to blame the engine. It is not the engine, it is the webmaster. He/she has failed, miserabley so, to connect all the dots. They let one slip past them, and they sink like a rock. (been there done that)This will happen in almost every situation, to a webmaster who does not spend enough time watching not only the serps, but the Alexa of his competitors, reading and understanding the engine TOS, and fully understanding how the Alexa tool when combined with serps documentation can help him stay on top of the competitors.
Then, the sad part is, the webmaster is so busy blaming the algo of the engine, he/she is wasting precious time that should be used in figuring out what they personally did wrong. The engines change constantly, and a successful webmaster sees those changes within hours or a few days, red flags them, watches them closely, and reacts quickly, long before others take a crushing blow.
For example, today MSN threw my red flag. I saw behavior today, that is inconsistent with the information that was expected. It was a subtle change, but none the less an important change. Today, I will spend my entire day figuring that out. It HAS to be done today. Each day I wait, it will only get worst, and be harder to recover when it all hits like a freight train on the UPDATE. Daily research is a required component of cyber success, not an option, to be completed IF you have time. You make time.
Now, do this everyday for a month. Why? Because many of those top 10 sites at Google are indexed every day.
If you document daily, it is much easier to come to conclusions quickly.
Let me share one other little tip with you. Do NOT use the meta tag to enter in a site 'topic' description. This does not perform well across the Big Three, when the page content exceeds more than a few keywords. I mention this because when you start sourcing pages in your research, you will see that, and might jump to the conclusion that it is a good thing.
It excludes nearly all websites, UNLESS:
1. You design for it from the beginning, creating short, to the point, very topic limited pages.
This is extremely hard to do effectively to maximize the 'topic' tag and will result in way too many pages in the site, sucking up more bandwidth than the wider topic pages would have used.
The exception to this would be those pages that have no 'template'. This means the pages only have raw text on them, with no page design images at all. In that case, you could maximize the effect of the topic tag. An example of such would be the stanford.edu page mentioned in my post further down. That page is also a good example of "how not to design a page" for visitor usability on an ecommerce site or on any site where revenue is expected from any source, including advertisements. Since stanford.edu is not striving for revenue on that page, it is not an issue.
2. You do so with a brand new domain name. We call them 'Virgin Doms' - Untouched Pristine Domain Names
Finally, go to the Stanford.edu site. Read the paper there by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page. Note how the word 'POSITION' is used in 4.2.5. Then, apply that to the writing composition course you took in high school or university.
Design your pages with the same principles, you would use to design an effective essay. Find a link to that page on the WW site or G it. I don't drop links. I think since searching is the most important part of your job, if you can't find that page through searching, you need more help than I can ever give you. I have given you enough information within this paragraph to search for it in G, and find the link in the #1 position.
If you have no idea what I mean when I say 'an effective essay'. Research that too while you are at it. You should do that if you can not correctly answer these questions:
1. What is the purpose of the page title?
2. What information goes in the first paragraph?
3. What information goes in the first sentence of the first paragraph?
4. What information goes into the first sentence of each paraphaph?
5. Which paragraph is the most important?
6. What goes in the final paragraph of a document?
7. What is the importance of a heading?
8. What is the importance of a subheading?
9. What is a topic sentence and where is it found?
10. What do the first sentence and last sentence of a document have in common?
11. How are essay pages read when written in english?
12. How does the way english pages are read, effect the organization of content, when they are written?
Combine what you learn about POSITION at stanford.edu and how it relates to page design, with the instructions I have given for Y and M algo research, above. Find those mutual facts of Y, M, and G, to create S. S = Success
SEO is about PERCENTAGES related to correctly designed pages. The relationship of your percentages to your competitors' percentages, as a percentage of the whole. Those who focus on the numbers only, and ignore the percentages, will always be subjected to things they can not understand, and therefore can not resolve. When you understand percentages, you will rank equally in the Big Three.