It has been several years since we’ve pulled this together, which means we are long overdue.
We had similar charts to this back in 2013 and 2015. With that information becoming quite dated post-pandemic, we have also received a number of requests to provide an update.
So without further adieu, I present to you:
Search Engine Market Share by Country – 2022 Update
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Observations
The pandemic sure has changed things for all of us. Most notably, a LOT more of us are now online globally. Specifically, we are now up to five billion total internet users worldwide! That number represents 62.5% of the global population. For reference, closer to 3.2B users accessed the internet back in 2015 (36.9% penetration), when we published our last chart of this nature.
Here are some specific observations that jumped out at us from this 2022 update:
- We are seeing many additions to this chart from countries that previously had far below 50M internet users. Joining this year’s updated list, we have Nigeria with 109M internet users, Egypt with 76M, Vietnam and Iran both at 72M, Turkey at 70M, Thailand at 55M, and finally Bangladesh at 53M. That’s seven out of the top 20 that were lower in overall user base when we last ran this analysis.
- The mix of search engines has evolved, and it’s even more concentrated around the “Big 3” than before. As you can see, Google, Bing, and Yahoo dominate in most countries.
- Newcomer search engines also show up this time around, including Petal Search, DuckDuckGo, and Sogou. Dropping from the rankings are South Korean search engines Daum and Naver, as well as Qihoo 360 in China. DuckDuckgo and Petal Search showed up on some of the countries that fell just short of this top 20 list, so we may see further growth for both of these younger search engines.
- Worth noting: the number of Baidu users in China alone is bigger than the total number of users in any other country worldwide.
- Aside from in Egypt, Yandex has fallen behind other search engines in pretty much every other market we analyzed. It is still holding on, but losing ground nonetheless.
- UAE, Denmark, and Ireland were the three countries with the highest per capita internet usage (penetration rates), and Northern Europe sits at 98% of the total population to lead the world with respect to regions.
- North Korea is at the very bottom of the list due to their restrictive internet policies. Nearly none of its population has access to the internet like the rest of the world.
Conclusion: 2022 Search Engine Market Share By Country
So there you have it. The number of people using the internet has nearly doubled and we are approaching 2/3 of the population online in 2022. When people mentioned the “new normal” throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, they were talking about increased health safety measures, remote work, and general changes to lifestyle.
Indirectly, however, we need the internet in as many hands as possible for this concept to become a reality. Our past couple of years have certainly accelerated progress, as it was estimated that we sat at ~46% penetration in 2018. that’s almost a 50% increase in only 3-4 years.
Will we see a similar trend in the next couple of years? It’s hard to say, but given the massive lifestyle changes we’ve now adopted, I won’t be surprised if it does.