NOTE FROM EDITOR:
We have published an update to the market share numbers, effective December 2013. Please view the updated numbers on the following page – 2013 Search Engine Market Share By Country
This week I’ve been doing a lot of research about International SEO. Google has introduced several important new optimization options in the past few years I’ll do a deep dive into more on the topic in the next post, but first, I want to share some numbers.
I came across a couple of great resources for international search and internet penetration data. Take a look below.
Takeaways
This is interesting data to say the least.
The first thing that jumps out is exactly what you would expect: Google dominates nearly every one of the top markets, as measured by population size and internet penetration. They enjoy a share of at least 87% in no less than 21 of the top 31 markets.
Second, it is fascinating to see what countries they do NOT dominate. Specifically:
- China: Baidu, 76%
- Japan: Yahoo! Japan (independent entity from Yahoo! Corporate), 56%
- Hong Kong: Yahoo!, exact share unavailable
- Russia: Yandex, 62%
- Czech Republic: Seznam, 45%
- South Korea: Naver, 73%
Baidu‘s 76% market share in China is rather huge when you consider that their population of internet users exceeds 500 million!
Yahoo! Japan actually uses Google’s engine to serve up SERPs, but they are an independent entity and have a lot of brand equity with the general public.
There is no way to know how much of a lead Yahoo! has over Google in Hong Kong, but it is the top search engine nonetheless.
Yandex is primarily a Russian search engine, although it is the second most used in Turkey as well. They have a directory where it is a good idea to list your site (or local site / ccTLD) if you want to do business in Russia.
Seznam is a local search engine in the Czech Republic, and was the main search engine there until very recently. Google is on the cusp of passing Seznam, most likely before the end of 2012.
Finally, Naver is a local search engine in South Korea. Google comes in a distant third with less than 10% of the market.
As you can see, Bing is a decent second place overall. But they aren’t even close to catching Google in any of the markets where they both play. The Bing/Yahoo combination in the US is the closest. It will be interesting to see if they can make progress in their pursuit to win the search battle domestically. If they can, the journey will not be a short one.
Up Next
I am also working on a similar analysis for these same countries, analyzing social media penetration. Look for that data in the next few days, followed by further commentary on international SEO shortly thereafter. Thanks for reading!
If you have any questions or feedback, please comment below. I’d love to hear from you.
DATA SOURCES
Internet World Stats Website
The WebCertain Search and Social Report 2011
Tommy Landry
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