Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - UK
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June 01, 2006
MSN and Yahoo! Search Tied for Second in UK
In preparation for publishing our UK Search Research Note next week (you can request a copy from the link on our homepage) and with SES London in full swing, I wanted to share some stats on the UK search market. Google powered three-quarters of all UK searches in the four weeks ending 20th May 2006 - combining the .com and UK properties. While it is always astonishing to see Google's strength in the UK - there's nothing really new here.
What's new is that MSN Search and Yahoo! Search are now tied for second in the share of executed UK searches. MSN Search and Yahoo! Search (again combining the UK and .com properties) each powered just over 7% of UK searches.
- Google UK is the most visited website in the UK, receiving more than twice the share of visits compared with MSN Hotmail, the #2 ranked site.
- Google UK, MSN.co.uk Search, Yahoo! UK & Ireland Search and Ask.co.uk Search together powered 82% of all UK internet searches in the four weeks ending 20th May 2006. Combining the UK and .com properties for these search engines that number climbs to 96%.
- In the US, Yahoo! Search is a stronger competitor. Amongst US internet users, Google.com powered 59% of all searches, compared to Yahoo! Search at 22% in the four-week period ending 20th May 2006. MSN Search powered 12% and Ask.com, 4% in that same four week period.
- Hitwise data indicates that visitors to Google are performing multiple searches and using the search engine as a point from which to navigate the web. First, comparing share of visits with share of executed searches, it is evident that Google powers a much larger share of searches relative to the share of visits the site receives. Second, visitors to Google UK spent an average of 13 minutes and 30 seconds on the site in the week ending 20th May 2006; this is 2 minutes and 46 seconds longer than visitors spent on Yahoo! UK and Ireland Search, the search engine among the leading 4 with the second longest session duration. Third, as with all search engines, the highest volume search terms on Google UK are navigational. In the four weeks ending 20th May 2006, the highest volume searches on Google UK were "ebay", "hotmail", "bebo", "yahoo" and "argos".
Posted by Heather Hopkins at 09:20 AM
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Comments
I'm surprised to see the UK properties accounting for such a high proportion of UK searches. Any feel for how this might be? Are people typing in '.co.uk' addresses, or is it some kind of automated redirection from the .com sites? Maybe it's tied to the use of toolbars / built-in search boxes, where you identify your locale on installation? There are all sorts of (potential) SEO implications here.
Posted by: Simon Dickson at June 1, 2006 01:38 AM
Simon, Great comment. Thanks.
The reason is as you said re-directs based on geo-targeting as well as use of toolbars. If you type in www.google.com in the UK you will most likely be re-directed to www.google.co.uk. You can select to go to www.google.com but the normal default in the UK is to direct you to the .co.uk domain.
Also, many people reach sites by searching for them. For example, last week, Search Engines accounted for 9% of upstream visits to Google UK. The highest volume search query performed on both Yahoo! UK & Ireland Search and MSN UK Search last week was "google".
Rather than typing in www.google.co.uk into a search engine - consumers are more often either searching for "google" or typing in www.google.com and being re-directed to www.google.co.uk.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
Cheers,
Heather
Posted by: Heather Hopkins at June 1, 2006 09:13 AM
It is perhaps not widely known that these days all you need to do is to type "google" or "yahoo" or whatever into the URL address box and the rest of the address is added automatically. This makes it even easier than typing, say, Yahoo into Google's search box.
Posted by: Victor Keegan at June 1, 2006 09:41 AM
Victor, Thanks for that - great shortcut (which I don't use enough)!
Will be good to see this evolve a bit so that UK users are directed to the UK URL. I searched for "ebay", "google" and "yahoo" and went to the .com domains for each.
If this short-cut gains in popularity, we may see use of search engines decrease. This will be good news for big brands who struggle to protect their brands on search engines.
Heather
Posted by: Heather Hopkins at June 1, 2006 10:48 AM
can't believe ask is so popular, I hardly see any referers from it.
well google is the clear winner here :P
Posted by: Mike at June 8, 2006 01:07 AM
Does google produce data for .co.uk vs .com searches? Certainly my Firefox search bar does not geo-redirect (I am in the UK) and takes me directly to .com. I wonder how much comeptition there is internally at google between territories!
Tony
Posted by: Tony Meehan at July 3, 2006 11:33 PM
Tony, Thanks for the comment.
Not sure if Google publishes this data, but Hitwise does. In this post I aggregated the share of executed searches for Google.com and Google.co.uk (as I did with the other engines as well).
In the four weeks ending Saturday 1st July 2006, Google.co.uk powered 64.11% of all UK internet searches and Google.com powered 12.49% of all UK searches. Google.co.uk is the #1 search engine based on share of executed searches and Google.com is #2.
Interesting that Firefox is not directing you to Google.co.uk. In my Firefox browser - it does. Must be determiend by the settings and cookies.
Thanks again for your query and comment.
Cheers,
Heather
Posted by: Heather Hopkins at July 4, 2006 12:07 AM
