When I talk to my American SEO friends, I cannot help but notice their surprise when I tell them that Google in Italy owns 95% of the search market share. Because of this ownership, search engine optimization is virtually synonymous with Google Search Optimization in my home country.
However, Italy is not an exception.
If we examine the percentages that Statcounter.com presents of the search engines’ market shares in Europe between January 2012 to January 2013, the monopolistic percentage repeats itself again and again, with very few exceptions:
| Spain | 96.08% | Portugal | 97.31% |
| France | 93,78% | Belgium | 98.21% |
| Ireland | 94.55% | United Kingdom | 91.54% |
| Netherlands | 94.33% | Germany | 94.81% |
| Austria | 96.3% | Switzerland | 95.76% |
| Denmark | 96.48% | Norway | 91.97% |
| Sweden | 96.25% | Finland | 97.14% |
| Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia | 96.85% | Poland | 97.31% |
| Czech Republic |
77.04% |
Slovakia | 97.98% |
| Slovenia | 94.72% | Croatia | 98.19% |
| Serbia | 97.54% | Montenegro | 95.26% |
| Macedonia | 95.26% | Greece | 96.77% |
| Romania | 97.59% | Bulgaria | 97.71% |
| Turkey | 97.97% | Belarus |
71.29% |
| Ukraine |
82.74% |
Russian Federation |
57.01% |
| Malta | 92.46% | Cypre | 94.47% |
The only countries where Google does not own the majority of search results are the Czech Republic (thanks to Seznam), Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia (thanks to Yandex, which is unfortunately losing market share).
Sad, isn't it? With such a monopoly put in place by Google, it's pretty easy to understand why even a simple change in its algorithm is able to send a big portion of European SEOs into a state of panic.
But really, aren't the above figures representative of the way people actually search and find information on the Internet, and, eventually, visit our websites? The answer is yes, but not quite.
To explain my slightly contradictory answer, let's look at an interesting study a friend of mine, Paolo Zanzottera, shared at the ConvegnoGT conference in December.
Research and methodology
Paolo presented the results of an extensive analysis of data obtained through the Italian Web Analytics platform, ShinyStat. He used this data to paint a picture of what search and Internet usage in Italy has looked like over the last few years. The data samples Paolo worked with include:
- Reference period: January 1, 2010 - October 31, 2012
- Basic metric analyzed: visits (DAA) from the world of Italian sites (89.18% from Italy)
- Sampling of visits: random visits (1 random visit out of 30 in distributed days and hours of the week)
- Size of search sample: 300,117,541 visits from search engines
- Size of social sample: 47,032,022 visits from social networks
- Total size of the sample: 750,022,334 visits
- Number of sites analyzed: 3.000 websites during the fixed period of time distributed in 47 categories and divided into 5 kinds of traffic
Let's take a look at the data displayed in a more meaningful way.
Visits from search engines
Visits from search engines to Italian sites 2010-2012
As we can see from the chart above, organic search is constantly increasing. The increase between January 2010 and October 2012 alone was 154.49 (39.34% between 2011 and 2012).
Please note that the increase is not represented as a constantly ascending line; instead, it presents a series of ups and downs, which are not justifiable only with seasonality. Indeed, the peaks of traffic volume should be explained through a bigger identification of the search engines through mass media as they are in correspondence with events that mark the news and impact on the awareness of the users (e.g. elections, political scandals, the earthquake in Emilia Romagna, sporting events, etc.).
In Italy, Google is not the only current search engine. In fact, there are international search engines like Bing, Yahoo, and Ask; and "national" search engines, such as Virgilio, Arianna, and Tiscali. Yet, as the chart below shows, the domination of Google is obvious.
Visits from single search engines
In reality, all the Italian national search engines (and Conduit, which is French) are powered by Google, so its domination is even more evident here:
Organic visit by "algorithm"
This domination is shown even further in the following market shares. Please note that Google was able to increase their market share, despite the recent Bing/Yahoo alliance.
Algorithm market shares in Italy 2010 vs 2012
If Google is typically the only search engine used, then it is important to know how the organic traffic to our sites is coming from the different Google organic algorithms. In this case, the research defined four verticals:
- Web
- Images
- News
- Maps
Note: a Google vertical like YouTube is not included in this research, as it was meant as a social platform.
Organic search powered by Google in 2012
What about the evolution of how Italian sites where searched? The data collected by Paolo clearly show us how users are progressively moving from the old classic "one-word query" to more sophisticated middle and long-tail keywords.
It's important to note that the use of single-word queries is not typically due to a user's potential ignorance in the use of search engines, but is more likely due to searches for brand names or domain names.
Keyword length evolution 2010 vs 2012
Another important topic when it comes to organic search is the impact of Not Provided. The chart below shows us that Not Provided is clearly impacting Italian organic search, but the percentage in October 2012 is not high enough to prevent correct SEO work ( it was at 14.85%). Nonetheless, the rise of Not Provided in organic search is impressive and constant.
Obviously, in very specific topics, the percentage of Not Provided can rise up to almost the 50% of the searches:
Not Provided vs Provided evolution 2010-2012
Social traffic
The impact of social media in organic traffic is, without a doubt, one of the most important events of the last few years.
This trend is evident in Italy, too. Keep in mind that in Italy, the "mainstream acceptance" of new Internet tools usually happens later than in the USA (or UK). This was the case for Twitter, which just exploded during the last 14 months. That said, this delay in accepting and using new tools seems increasingly shorter, as exemplified by the acceptance of Pinterest, which in Italy has suddenly adopted in close comparison to the rest of the world.
Twitter and Pinterest explosions in Italy
In Italy, social media's status of "popular" and only used by a small, very active group of early adopters changed to become widely accepted between 2010 and 2011. Social media is now part of a completely mainstream environment (+1768%). But the data collected via ShinyStat shows us that around October 2011, the referral traffic from social media had a dramatic boost. This boost was so powerful that in October 2012, the traffic from social media was equal to the one between January and October 2010!
If we compare this chart with the chart highlighting the evolution of visits from search engines presented in the beginning of this post, we will see that news and events are the main generators of traffic from social networks. It is a completely natural occurence as social media outlets are the places where people discover news, talk about what's going on in their area, and even generate news stories.
Evolution of traffic from social media in Italy between 2010 and 2012
Twitter and Pinterest are interesting and important social networks, but in social media (as in search), there is just one, almost monopolistic, dominator of social media in Italy: Facebook.
Evolution of traffic from the different social networks in Italy between 2010 and 2012
Right now, Facebook represents 97.69% of the referral traffic from social networks, while the amount of visits generated by the other social networks is almost “symbolic:”
Social network market shares in Italy 2010 vs 2012
As we can see, just 0.22% of visits from social networks right now are from Google+. However, recent studies show that in the last couple of months, Google+ is actually growing with a faster rhythm than Twitter.
So, how is it the overall quality of traffic from social networks in Italy? Not so good, according to metrics like bounce rate and pages per visit that Paolo used in order to have a first raw “quality analysis.” Bounce rate from social is usually very high, and the time per visit and pages per visit numbers are much lower than the numbers from search engines.
With these statistics, is it possible to represent the larger influence of social versus the use of search in Italy? Yes, it is:
Search traffic vs social traffic in Italy between 2010 and 2012
Both are growing, but the distance between search traffic and social traffic is getting smaller.
If we visualize the traffic volumes in percentages, then the growing importance of social networks is even more evident. Here are the social traffic shares in January 2010:
Search vs. social in Italy on January 2010
And here in October 2012:
Search vs. social in Italy on October 2012
All of these “versus” analyses are confirming something we already know to be true through experience: in Italy, the real competitor of Google is Facebook:
Google vs. Facebook vs. Others (i.e. search engines and social networks) on October 2012
Desktop vs. mobile
Mobile is an hot topic, and the charts we see usually refer to USA or UK markets. But what about countries like Italy? Maybe you don’t know yet, but Italy (and, similarly, Spain), is one of the nations where the mobile market is more evolved than the biggest players in the technology game.
The ShinyStat data shows us how mobile is on the rise in Italy. Thanks to the über fast evolution of smartphones, the introduction of iPad and Android phones/tablets, and the use of Internet everywhere, mobile is literally exploding:
Growth of visits from mobile in Italy between 2010 and 2012
In less than three years, the traffic from mobile devices to Italian sites grew 8x. The spikes are easy to understand as they correspond to August’s metrics. Italians cannot seem to shut their smartphones off (even when they are on holiday), and during August 2012, one of five visits came from a mobile device.
In reference to mobile iOS, Italy reflects global trends well:
Evolution of traffic from mobile and iOS in Italy between 2010 and 2012
In Italy, too, we see that there are two clear competitors: iOS (Apple) and Android (Google).
It is interesting to notice that the distance in terms of traffic generated between the two operating systems seems stable. What does that mean? It means that Android didn't really eroded market share from Apple, but inherited users from all the platforms outside of iOS, especially Symbian:
Mobile market shares by iOS in Italy on January 2010
Mobile market shares by iOS in Italy on October 2012
The ShinyStat data allow us to dig even deeper into the analysis of mobile traffic. For instance, let's take a look at the traffic from Apple devices. In this chart, we can see that users are moving from using their iPhones for searching and visiting sites to using iPads:
Traffic from iPhone vs traffic from iPad in Italy between 2010 and 2012
The war of the browsers
Part of the analysis presented by Paolo Zanzottera was focused on which browsers are used for visiting Italian sites between 2010 and 2012:
Browser use between January 2010 and October 2012
We can easily see how Internet Explorer (and, similarly, Firefox) were used for steady amounts of visits to Italian sites between 2010 and 2012. In an agrressively competitive industry that is ever-changing, this statistic is basically saying that Internet Explorer and Firefox lost market share for being static. The charts below give us even more confirmation:
Browser market share January 2010
Browser market share October 2012
Takeaways
So, what conclusions about the Italian Internet and search industry can we draw from this analysis?
First, thinking about optimizing for Google only while working as an inbound marketing strategy is shortsighted, even in countries such as Italy (and most likely the other European countries) where Google has no stand-out competitor in search. User behavior suggests that, although Google is currently winning the race, they might not be forever. Along with that thought, the weight of social media (with Facebook leading the charge) is so heavily tied to SEO that today, it could be synonymous with the term "SEOcial."
Secondly, it has become absolutely clear that even in a market like Italy's (and certainly Europe as a whole), we must understand that the Internet is everywhere, and we must complete the final transition from a desktop-only world to a multi-device Internet marketing strategy. As a consequence, conversion rate optimization of mobile sites, not just SEO, should be a priority of every web marketer during 2013.
Finally, a more general conclusion can be made: user behavior when searching and using the Internet is changing at a rate even higher than that of just a few years ago.
If we use the Italian case as a benchmark, we have observed that the market is largely different today from what was just two years ago. The increased speed in changing behaviors is a factor that needs to be explained, especially to those whose decisions make the most impact in any business. A lengthy amount of time spent on decision making, fueled by excessive bureaucracy, can be equal to a disaster online at the current rate of change.
I think the main takeaway from this article is the realization that how we use the internet is changing and we cannot think of search as a desktop/Google based experience.
Apart from the fact that the growth of mobile has emphasized things like site speed, the advancements in social media by not just Facebook, but even Twitter, Quora, YouTube, etc... means that when we're adivsing site owners on improving the ROI of their website, we have to keep in mind that the search experience goes beyond Google on a desktop.
Thanks for providing the stats, they really put things into perspective. Great article.
Great post! Google is by far the most popular search engine in the Netherlands. Also Clients do not give a hoot about the other Search Engines. Looks like Google has come down a 0.1% since 2009 though...
Very cool post Gianluca,
You inspired me to write and article for my new Portuguese website :) I am specially interested to find more data on mobile, I want to compare some stats with smart phone penetration.
Grazie mille
Ps. Give me a note if you drop by Switzerland :)
Interesting way too Interesting...
I think Europe is not the only place but i think when it comes to south Asia (i am not including china here) Google is the most used search engine and as you said for Italy the case is similar here... with the time the difference between Google and Search Engine is becoming blur.
Here in my country, there are some local search engines but as the online industry is on a very initial level and they really don’t cover any notable traffic so I don’t think they are even discussion worthy... so collectively I won’t be wrong to say that Google is the only search engine people use and know here in my end of the world.
In Israel it's the same, from the stats i have (and i have plenty) Google has around 97-98% of the search market (Bing has roughly 0.4%) and that's without counting Google partners like Conduit (which is an Israeli company and not French as stated - not that i am super proud about this crapware built in my country)
Thanks for the clarification. I wrote French as it is especially used by French speaking users.
Fantastic post, i always love to see a well researched post with great data.As nazre said, this data collection hopefully will kill off the rumours, and as LinkedIn had an article on, Search is ALWAYS the better investment then Social for creating business.
I'm from Macedonia and, albeit being years back in following online trends, here the tendency of change can be felt too.Lacking the stats and not having any research made, it is still obvious that all of the things you pointed out like mobile traffic increase and social traffic increase are happening at a rather faster rate.
Some stats clearly point out that when the Balkans are concerned social traffic is, despite being hard to believe, taking an even bigger percent than search traffic. Same thing happens in other parts of the world.
I would love to see a research being made linking internet behavior with things like average income, degree of education, and other social standards... For example- In my country, transactional keywords are almost non-existent.
Whatever SEO exists is mainly centered towards some informational queries (short tail, mostly), and excluding branches like link building, practices are mainly centered around keyword research, competing for terms closely related to the brand name and industry.
Local search tends to predominate over time, and as far as mobile goes it is social oriented more than anything else. I do not any have statistics as to support these claims, and these are just things I noticed, mostly by being curious about search and how people in my country use the internet.
Staying ahead of the curve, as important as it is in USA and globally speaking, gets even more important in small markets as these.
Awesome post Gianluca!
Thanks!
Thanks Gianluca,
That was very informative post alongwith graph. In india also, you'll find google is the sole search engine people use. Infact, half of the people here use Google to check whether internet is working properly or not. Here after google, facebook is the second site where people visit most. I hope, the new facebook graph search will definitely give some tough competition to google.
Is Shiny Stat a paid tool?
P.S After reading this post, I got an idea of writing something of Google usage in Asia.
Thanks.
Yes, Shinystat is a paid analytics tool.
There is no doubt in accepting the reality that Google has its unique individual
position among all the search engines around the globe. With the
passage of time Google is regularly updating its algorithm and thus it
is progressing fast with respect to other search engines. You're provided data also prove the fact that Google have a greater share of search engines in most of the countries and Italy is also one of the them.
Superb post. I wish use this occasion to appreciate you for publishing this post. Huge study. Great effort. Sir can you post the percentage in India?
I guess the only way for people to use Google less is for them to literally use social media more. But if that happens, I'm sure Google will try to release apps for social media sites or something like that.
Do you notice considerable differences in how these search engines rank results? Or are the same SEO techniques universal beyond Google?
I know that Google is by far the strongest search engine, but I would never expect that Google is that strong. I am from Serbia and around 25% of visitors to my website comes from Bing and Yahoo. I personally know people that don't use Google. Also, many older people in Serbia use MSN only because it is default page in internet explorer and they don't know how to change default page. I believed that Google search market share in Serbia is between 80 and 85 percents, so I am a bit shocked with these statistics.
Thanks for post.
"Russian Federation 57.01%" "(thanks to Yandex, which is unfortunately losing market share)."
It isn't true. Here is the proof: https://www.liveinternet.ru/stat/ru/searches.gif?period=month;relgraph=yes;graph=yes
I'll be honest - I'm very willing to optimize for Bing/Yahoo, but never at the expense of Google. If I can "supplement" my optimization, I'm 100% for it. If changing anything for Bing means moving away from what I think are best practices for G, I'm not going to spend a minute stressing over it.
One of our clients has about 150k visitors a month. They average 142k coming from Google, 4k Bing, 4k Yahoo. It's not worth it, even there, to lose any G advantage to gain more in B and Y.
Overall, I agree, though. I would prefer to optimize search for those who visit and we often check out our demographics to make sure we're optimizing sites for the people who are actually coming.
Google is so dominant for us that realistically Bing and Yahoo are 'blind' to us. If we can roll out site changes that will improve all 3, then that's great. But like you said, if we can improve Google rankings marginally and the other 2 take a hit - well we are definitely going to proceed.
This is an outstanding data, i am very much surprised by looking the graph of Google VS Facebook. It was the biggest rumor that Facebook is beating Google almost, i hope this is the article which will disclose the facts about the actual competitions between search engines as well as social networking sites. Hats off for this wonderful article.
one of the greatest Google shell game was to add Google in people's mind as a verb. It annoys me when all my French friend (I am French) are saying "let's google it" rather than "use a search engine"
This was an absolutely stellar read. I love the depth of the data and the breakdown and explanation of it. Thank you, gfiorelli1!
I think the word of 2013 is going to be "diversification." Yes, Google has an obscene search market share internationally, but like you said here there are a number of different outlets that don't just compete with Google, but also incrementally increase the overall volume of traffic - especially as mobile browsing explodes and the sheer volume of searches from whatever medium is spiking since the web is simply more accessible to more people 24 hours a day. I am as tired of any other SEO of frequent, unpredictable and bizarre Google algorithm updates that have such a dramatic impact on some of my sites. My focus this year is not on how to survive Google's mood swings. It's on how to aggressively diversify, instead of casually, and more equally distribute the weight of my inbound traffic. As one of my favorite tree-hugging hippie folk artists says, "May we vow to get off this sauce."
Good Post Mr GianLuca . In India Google is having 96.7 % and as you said rightly whenever a google algorithm comes out all seo's here will be in panic as we dnt know what to expect from google .
I believe Google will be aiming for the same thing across all countries they work in, so keep up to date with what is happening in other parts of the world and see if you can use adapt those warnings into your own site.
Awesome post with all the comparison..
Gfiorelli1,
Thanks for such an informative posts. The search graphs specially the mobile searches ones are really impressive and note worthy.
I'd like to add one key part.
You have missed the %age of Google searches in China where Google unfortunately could not build its monopoly having only 29% share.
Hi Syed,I didn't extended the post to China as I took Italy as history case, and the Italian evolution of the use of the Internet - especially because of culture consistency - can reflect especially what can be also the evolution in Europe, even though surely we could find macro trends common to every nations.
For that reason, I didn't mention Google market shares in Latam, Asia, Africa and Australia/Pacific.
Excellent post Gianluca. Italy is a beautiful country with a beautiful culture. Rome is my favorite city in the world.
I loved all the data which backs up all your points. China is another example of where Google does not dominate.
I like your term SEOcial and Facebook graph search, currently in beta, has the potential to strongly reinforce this concept in my view.
Facebook and Google traffic, at least in the US, are different in terms of user intent. When people are in discovery on Facebook, they are generally in the "friends and family" state of mind and open to suggestions.
When Internet users are on Google, the model is typically "seek and consume", generally with a much higher commercial intent.
From a marketing an advertising standpoint, I view Google vs Facebook as the classic comparison of display (Facebook) vs search (Google), either paid or natural/organic.
Google+ is one to keep an eye on and will, over time, errode Facebook market share, in the US and Worldwide.
Thanks for sharing.
Very detailed post. You have way to much spare time :)It will be nice to see all the graphs vs world wide.
It is not a question of having a lot of spare time... it's a question of how you use the time you have :)
Great point, a lot of people are busy being seen as busy, rather than accomplishing things. Using your time to produce something as detailed and well thought out as this will get you noticed quicker and to a higher level than most of those "busy people"
Interesting to note that facebook represents 97.69% of the referral traffic from social networks in italy. That's why in countries like Brazil, Argentina, Pakistan, Malaysia, Iceland... facebook has more traffic than google. (According to alexa.com)
So Google has a monopoly in almost every major international market? This isn't entirely unexpected. I guess my takeaway is that we can't rely 100% on organic search. Marketing needs to branch out into social, PPC and "traditional" channels like direct mail, trade shows, cable TV and radio. If we put all of our eggs in one basket (SEO) we're bound to get smashed to bits by an algorithm update or a competitor's content mill. We should maintain a diverse "inbound marketing" strategy rather than just focusing on Google's latest whim. In short - diversification mitigates risk.
The reality is that most SEOs do mainly optimise for google. I have always believed though that the content on the site is what really brings the traffic, good content optimised well, will work well with time and effort.
I have never shied away from the use of Keywords for example. Why? because there are plenty of smaller search engines that still utilise them. Further more Google hasn't completely done away with them across the board. https://www.stateofsearch.com/google-brings-the-keywords-meta-tag-back-to-life/
So, use this to get your site listed in older search engines, traffic that finds your site through these engines is just as likely to link, so "what's good for the Goose, is good for the Gander".
Feeding the search engines, in all ways is ultimately going to pay dividends. Do you have good content, is it SEOd, do you appear in the indexes of all the major engines? Are you creating content for all the relevant social networks? Are you catering to mobile, if so...you are on the road to happy days
Mmmm... but that revamped keyword tag is just for the News vertical. If your site has nothing to do with news, then the "new" keyword tag has no meaning.
Then... old search engines: 99% are powered by Google, as - for instance - I say in the post for search engines like Virgilio, Tiscali or Arianna in Italy; hence, the keyword tag still have no sense.
In Australia Google has a very high market share too, I think its close to around 96%+.I actually met up with some guys from Bing in Australia and they were only talking about getting a few extra "percentage" points, here is to hoping that Facebook Graph search gets some market share.
Google is definitely the dominant one in AUS - I'm predicting some increases for Bing due to their Win8 roll-out that includes Bing as the default search mechanism. People will give it a try... especially the younger audiences. Should be interesting to watch the impact of FB Graph Search!
Yep - I believe Bing will pick up a few percentage points in the coming months/years. Google has such a stranglehold here at the moment - we don't even consider the other search engines.
And yes, FB graph search will certainly change the landscape, hopefully for the better!
Where is Canada in the list?
If continents didn't move during the night, Canada (still) is not part of Europe...
Although you are welcome to join us if you like
I am with Jonathan Villiard: where is Canada in that list Gianluca?!?!!?
"search engines’ market shares in Europe"
It is amazing to see how quickly things change in the internet marketing world isn't it? When we talk about the rise of mobile and of social search, I wonder if these are likely to have a big overlap or if mobile and social will start separately and then merge together over time. Any thoughts?
I was very surprised to see how dominant is Google is in Europe. Maybe I should just be more surprised that Google hasn't taken more market share here in the US. Glad to see the increase in Chrome usage as well. Very well organized data. Thanks for the share!
Great post Gianluca. We know that this pattern is repeated in most of the countries where Google is "almost" monopoly.
Great job curating the presentation of Paolo Zanzottera! I'm grateful that you are building the bridge between our great speakers and the seomoz readers! kudos!
Great post Gianluca! Even more evidence to suggest we need to explore all avenues of inbound marketing & can no longer solely rely on search.
The graphs & charts are very high quality too - were they created in Google Spreadsheets?