Search Engine Marketing Share around the World from US, Europe and Asia

I have been asked this question many many times internally and externally so i decided to spend some time today to gather as much data as i can.
The focus of this blog has always been SouthEast Asia and North Asia. However, in order to give a broader picture, i will cover as many territories where reliable data is available as possible.

In this post i will cover:

• First part: Search Engine Market Share in various markets around the world: US, UK, France, German, Russia, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, China, India, Australia, Singapore and the rest of Asean (Oct2008)
• Second part: Comments on Searches volume and searches per searcher in APAC.

1. Search Engine Market Share in US Oct 2008

• Google sites: 63.1% (or 7.971 billion searches out of total 12.642 billion searches for Oct 2008)
• Yahoo! sites: 20.5% (or 2.589 billion searches)
• Microsoft sites: 8.5% (or 1.080 billion searches)
• Other smaller search engines

Note: Data from comScore

2. Search Engine Market Share in UK Oct 2008

• Google sites: 89.44%
• Yahoo sites: 2.86%
• Ask.com sites: 2.16%

Data from Hitwise UK for October 2008 based on volume of searches

3. Search Engine Market Share in France for Aug 2008

• Google sites: 82% (or 2.05 billion searches out of total 2.5 billion searches for Aug 2008)
• Microsoft sites: 2.7%
• Groupe Pages Jaunes: 2.7% (Yellow pages in France)
• Yahoo sites: 2.3%
• Other smaller search engines

Data from comScore: Top 10 French Search properties

4. Search Engine Market Share in German in Aug 2008

• Google sites: 79.8% (3.022 billion searches out of total 3.790 billion searches for Jul 2008)
• eBay: 6.1% ( 0.230 billion searches)
• Other smaller search engines

Data from comScore: Top 10 German Search Properties

5. Search Engine Market Share in Russia in Feb 2008

• Yandex: 47.4%
• Google sites: 31.2%
• Rambler Media: 9.7%
• Mail.Ru sites: 7%
• Other smaller search engines

Data from comScore: Top 10 Russian Search Engines

6. Search Engine Market share in Japan in Sept 2008

• Yahoo! Sites: 51.2% (or 3.012 billion searches out of total 5.879 billion searches for Sept 2008)
• Google sites: 39.0% ( or 2.294 billion searches)
• Rakuten Inc: 2% (or 0.12 billion searches)
• Other smaller search engines

Note:

• Data from comScore: Top Search Properties in Japan
• Total number of searches in Japan excludes searches from public computers such as internet cafes
• Google number include searches done on YouTube

7. Search Engine Market Share in Korea

• Naver.cim site: 77%
• Daum.net site: 10.8%
• Yahoo site: 4.4%
• Google site: 1.7%

Data from KoreanClick, an Internet market research company

8. Search Engine Market Share in Hong Kong

Again, there is no data form Hitwise, comScore available for public. However, from my experience of running PPC campaigns over there, the marketshare for Yahoo is about 80% and Google is less than 15%

9. Search Engine Market Share in China 2008

• Baidu sites: 63.4% to 65.8%
• Google sites: 22%

Data from market analysis firms: China IntelliConsulting Coporation and Analysys International

10. Search Engine Market Share in India in June 2008

• Google sites: 81.4% (1.0111 billion searches out of 1.242 billion searches during June 2008)
• Yahoo sites: 9.4% (117 billion searches)
• Ask Network: 1.9%
• Other smaller search engines

Data from comScore: Top search properties in India June 2008

11. Search Engine Market Share in Australia in Oct 2008

• Google sites: 90.57%
• Live.com (Microsoft sites): 3.83%
• Yahoo sites: 2.30%

Data from Hitwise – Leading Search Engine in Australia Oct 2008

12. Search Engine Market Share in Singapore Oct 2008

• Google Sites: 69.75%
• Yahoo sites: 23.53%

Data from Hitwise – Leading Search Engine in Singapore

13. Search Engine Market Share in MY, TH, VN, PH, ID

Well there are no reliable sources to verify the exact percentage for each country. My personal understanding of each market is as below

• Vietnam: Google leads with more than 90% of the market share
• Thailand: same situation, Google’s search market share should be more than 90%
• MY, PH and Indonesia: Google should have at least 50% of the search market share

14. Asia Pacific Search Overview

First of all, according to comScore, Asia Pacific region has the largest unique searchers and largest volume of search queries in the world (out of 5 regions reported by comScore):
There were 29 billion searches conducted in Sept 2008 and this number is growing, which shows us the enormous potential for search engine marketing.
This number for Jul 2008 and April 2008 were 27.059 billion and 22.363 billion respectively.

Below are the graphs representing searches conducted in some countries in Asia Pacific from April to Sept

We saw the most increase from China and Australia. Most of other countries, the search volume stays relatively the same.

Country	Searches (Millions) in April	Searches (Millions) in July	Searches (Millions) in Sept
China	6,233	10994	12758
Japan	6160	6162	5879
Korea	2139	2101	2303
India	1209	1192	1169
Australia	851	855	977
Taiwan	698	748	618
Malaysia	385	431	405
Hong Kong	256	228	199
Singapore	170	152	171
New Zealand	146	136	135

Above is the same information but in absolute values.

Those people who search online, they conducted on average 84.7 searches per person in September 2008

Country	Searches per Searcher in April	Searches per Searcher in July	Searches per Searcher in Sept
China	75	76.7	85.5
Japan	102.6	100.8	96.2
Korea	103.5	102.8	109.3
India	55.4	51	51
Australia	97.7	102	114.6
Taiwan	70.7	74.8	63.5
Malaysia	54.3	64.2	65.2
Hong Kong	88.1	81	71.8
Singapore	100.9	91.2	105.6
New Zealand	88.5	87.2	90.1

Singapore, Australia and Korea lead the way in terms of searches per searcher with more than 100 searches per searcher per month or at least 3 per day. This shows that the savvy audience increasingly depends on search for their daily activities.

In conclusion, the use of search engine is becoming an inseparable part of daily urban life. No matter where you are, people use Search Engines.
The opportunity for Search Engine Marketing in Asia Pacific region is enormous with its huge audience (online internet users) and the volume of searches conducted.
The ball is now on advertisers’ court to see how they can take advantage of this opportunity to reach out to an ever increasing audience who’s constantly looking for information online using Search Engines.