Search engine market shares in Europe

If you target international markets then it's important to know which search engines are used by European web surfers.

Google has a large market share in the US. Astonishingly, Google's market share seems to be even bigger in Europe. Here are the numbers from Germany, France and the UK:

* Search engine market shares in Germany: With a market share of 88.5%, Google is the clear leader in Germany. Yahoo has 3.4%, followed by German ISP T-Online (2.2%), MSN (1.4%) and AOL (1.3%).

* Search engine market shares in France: With 89.79%, Google's has an enormous market share in France. Yahoo follows with 3.14%. MSN gets 2.48%, local ISP's Orange and Free get 1.89% and 0.72%.

* Search engine market shares in the UK: Google has a market share of 79.38% in the UK. Yahoo gets 7.72%. With 4.48%, Ask.com is the third biggest search engine in the UK. Microsoft's search engines MSN and Live get 3.75% and 1.53% (a total of 5.28% for Microsoft search engines).

Google is by far the most widely used search engine in these European countries. The stats show how important it is to optimize your website for Google. To get high rankings on Google, you need good inbound links and optimized web page content.

Source: Axandra Newsletters