No prizes for guessing the leader; Google is still hugely dominant with over 90% of market share. Bing & Yahoo make a notable contribution with just over roughly 3% each, leaving the other two major search engines, AOL & Ask, trailing with less than 1% each. These of course all still way ahead of all other search engine brands, which combined only account for less than 0.2% of this year’s market share. When you consider just how many are included in this bracket, the significance of these results really starts to sink in – remember Lycos, AltaVista or MSN search? All have practically sunk without trace, scary stuff.

So what does this mean for your marketing? Well, if you’re not advertising on Google, you should be. Whether you like it or not, Google has total dominance in the Search market. It’s been reported that globally Google receives over 1 billion monthly unique visitors, that’s huge – it equates to approximately 1 in 7 people around the world visiting Google each month. To see just how popular Google is, use the below link to see a great 3D representation of the number searches around the globe – it’s something to behold:

click here >> Google Search Globe << click here

To find out more about Search Engine Marketing, click here, or alternatively give us a call on 0845 275 1225.

Sources: StatCounter.com, SearchEngineWatch.com, ComScore.com, Google Trends

Top 20 websites

Google and Facebook still display their supremecy in online usage. The main proportion of the top 20 websites is dominated by Social Networking sites, search engines and news portals.

Top 10 Search Engines

Google is stil by far the UK’s favourite search engine. Google.co.uk, Google.com and Google UK image search made up over 85% of visits to search engines.

Top 10 Overall Search Terms

Again search terms are dominated by Social Network search phrases as they continue to grow in popularity.

Top 10 Social Networks

As Facebook continues to grow and grow in the UK so does the websites rankings in terms of visits making up almost half of all visits to Social Networking sites as visits to competitors bebo and MySpace struggle to keep up with the pace.

Source: Hitwise

Bing is currently unavailable to the public, however, we are told that as of June 1st some Microsoft Live users will receive Bing search results. By June the 4th Bing will apparently be Microsoft’s default search tool.

According to Microsoft, Bing provides users with a greater search experience, helping them make better decisions. It has even been dubbed a “decision engine” by some due to the fact many of the new features involve assisting searchers chose the best option be it in making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

So does Bing have a chance of competing with Search Engine powerhouse Google?

Well, that is the real question. One major factor is how much Microsoft are willing to invest in promoting the new search engine. Obviously, the company is certainly not short of money, but look at their rivals – Yahoo! and also more recently Ask who have invested millions with only little improvement in search market share.

Google’s dominance doesn’t look set to be challenged. Least of all by a brand new search engine, it is also key to remember that Microsoft only launched Live Search in 2006 – less than 3 years ago, with minimal success. Marketers have also critisized the branding of the new search engine deeming it a ‘fail’.

So what does Bing have to offer?

On the surface it may not seem to offer much different to Google, but Bing has some great features that are definatley worth investigating.

Check out the video above, areas of particular interest are: bing local, bing shopping, bing health & bing travel.

Sources: Microsoft , TechRadar & Cnet

Microsoft are to attempt to take a noticeable amount of earch space market share from leaders Google and Yahoo.

After a pretty poor start and struggling initially with branding Micrososft have had little impact on the search market. It was recently suggested by AdvertisingAge that Microsoft are going to spend between $80 and $100 million on turning this around.

What the branding may be is still fairly unknown (Microsoft, MSN, Live?) but they did reveal tests of their latest search interface, code named Kumo, a short time ago. The campaign is set to consist of Online Ads, TV, Print and Radio.

Source: SearchEngineLand