Google’s share of the UK search market slipped between January and February with Bing and Yahoo! reaping the benefits, according to the AT Internet Institute.
Losing 1.6% of their hold on the UK audience from January 2010, Google nevertheless remained dominant with a remaining 89.2% share of the potential audience for search engine marketing. With “approximately 9 visits out of 10 on average per website” across Europe, Google remains top dog in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.
Indeed, the United Kingdom was the only one of the four European countries tracked by AT that showed any significant change to Google’s share.
This seemingly small drop in the share could be quite significant upon closer examination. For example, if Ask or AOL – ranked 4 and 5 in the UK – were to lose the same amount, they would entirely lose their UK audience (1.3% and 0.7% respectively). Additionally, this is one of the most significant changes to AT’s figures for search market share since the launch of Bing in June 2009.
Just one month ago, Google had gained 0.7% and Bing had dropped 0.3%; for the past year or so Google has been slowly gaining incremental increases in its search market share. Now, in the space of a month Bing has regained its lost share and Google has dropped an entire percentage for the first time in over six months.
Over the next few months, the UK search market could see further change; Bing is to launch a three month TV and online campaign in the UK, aiming to replace Yahoo! as the second most popular search engine.
Although Bing has been available since it was launched in June, it was only in November 2009 that Microsoft fully localised their UK results and offered a workable system for UK SEO. This ‘launch’ was remarkably unpublicised. Now, it seems as though Microsoft was simply waiting for the new financial year.
If the campaign successfully builds brand awareness for Bing and entices UK users, Microsoft’s product could become a much more attractive prospect for investment in search engine marketing campaigns through PPC search ads or strategic SEO.
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