Google faring better in UK than US

Google has been more successful in the UK than it is in its native US, and accounts for almost twice as many UK online searches as all of its rivals put together.

According to the latest figures from online research company Hitwise, in the four weeks to March 5, Google.co.uk was used for 63.7 per cent of all UK internet searches. Its closest competitor, MSN.co.uk Search, was only used for 7.9 per cent of searches, while Google’s US site, Google.com, came in third with 7.7 per cent.

In the US, Google faces much more competition from Yahoo! Search. Over the same four-week period, Google.com represented 56.7 per cent of all searches by US internet users, while Yahoo! Search was used in 29.9 per cent. In the UK, Yahoo! Search was used in a total of 8.4 per cent of searches (uk.search.yahoo.com in 5.5 per cent, and search.yahoo.com in 2.9 per cent).

Hitwise’s research also reveals that different search engines are used for different purposes. For instance, Wanadoo Search and MSN.co.uk Search send more of their visitors to travel industry websites than rival search engines, while Ask Jeeves UK sends more of its visitors to the shopping and classified categories.

The keyword most used in UK searches during the four-week period was “Ebay”, with 0.91 per cent of all searches; other variations of the Ebay name accounted for 0.45 per cent of searches.