It is well known that Google hosts the most search queries in the world. It’s dominance is no doubt being challenged by the growth of Bing and persistence of Yahoo search, but Google is still the king of search, by a longshot.
If you missed it, last week comScore came out with its United States search engine rankings for April. The rankings showed that Google still dominates the search market, holding 65.4% of the share. Yahoo came in a distant second with 15.9% and Bing rounded out the top three with 14.1%.
Google dropped .3% from March to April, while both Yahoo and Bing increased their volume by .2%.
So, while Google holding almost 2/3 of the share of search in America is dominant, it’s nothing compared to what’s going on in Latin America.
comScore reports that over 90% of searches in Latin America are happening through Google (including YouTube). Of the 18.5 billion individual search queries in March 2011, 16.7 of them were performed through Google. Facebook garnered the next highest percentage at 2.8% and Microsoft rounded out the top three just under Facebook’s volume.
The study also found that search in general surged in Latin America, up 21% year-over-year. They found that the average searcher in Latin America conducts 167 queries per month. The study reported a 14% increase in unique searchers and 6% increase in search volume per person.
Brazil accounted for the largest volume of queries with 6 billion in March and also had the strongest growth year-over-year at 34%. Mexico and Colombia followed with 3.2 billion and 2.9 billion respectively.
Google’s level of dominance in the States pales in comparison to their dominance in Latin America. And their dominance is a global thing – according to a report earlier this year there are only 5 countries in the world where Google isn’t the top search engine.
In a move that may help their cause in challenging Google’s supremacy, Bing just announced Facebook integration in search. This move allows friend’s “likes” to become a factor in search rankings. Bing says that this move towards “social search” is what people want, and is the model of the future.
