Search engine market expected to explode in Europe

June 2, 2005

The search engine industry in Europe is expected to increase significantly according to the latest numbers from Nielsen NetRatings.

All over Europe, search activity increased by eleven percent in 2004 compared to an average growth of only 4 percent in Web users.

According to Nielsen, across Europe in April 2004 there were 110 million Internet users, which has risen to 115 million in a year. In contrast, the number of people using search engines grew from 79 million to 88 million.

France topped the list of biggest searchers with 81 per cent of users being regular searchers closely followed by the UK with 80 per cent. Both countries are now ahead of the US which has a search to user ratio of 79 per cent.

Google is by far the most popular search engine across Europe.

According to research figures from Hitwise a whopping 69 per cent of users go to Google.com or .co.uk. Next is MSN with 8.4 per cent, Ask Jeeves also on 8.4 per cent and Yahoo! a surprising fourth at just eight per cent, although Nielsen puts Yahoo! just ahead of Ask Jeeves. The popularity of Google in the UK is even larger than that in the US.

The popularity of MSN is accounted for by the fact that it is the default search on Internet Explorer. MSN searchers are far more likely to use single word searchers or URLs than the users of other search engines. In contrast Ask Jeeves searchers are likely to put in must longer key phrases as it prides itself on being able to understand natural language searches.

While Google is the most popular search engine across Europe including the UK, France Germany, Italy and Spain, among others there are room for local language search engines. For example the second most popular search engine in France is Voila while MSN is in second place elsewhere. A pattern of local players start to emerge further down the rankings with Virgillo in Italy, Eniro in Sweden and search.ch in Switzerland taking third places.

The UK in contrast, as an English speaking country, has no local search engine but relies on US engines.

On the back of the booming search industry, revenues from targeted search advertising is set to almost double. David Graham, MSN's Search Business Manager says that by 2010 search engine marketing revenues in Europe will be 2.7 billion euros, up from 1.4 billion euros in 2005.

Source: PC Pro.co.uk

Read Serge Thibodeau's daily blogs on search engines at Serge Thibodeau Live. We strongly suggest you bookmark our web site by clicking here.

Tired of receiving unwanted spam in your in box? Get SpamArrest� and put a stop to all that SPAM. Click here and get rid of SPAM forever!

Get your business or company listed in the Global Business Listing directory and increase your business. It takes less then 24 hours to get a premium listing in the most powerful business search engine there is. Click here to find out all about it.

Rank for $ales strongly recommends the use of WordTracker to effectively identify all your right industry keywords. Accurate identification of the right keywords and key phrases used in your industry is the first basic step in any serious search engine optimization program. Click here to start your keyword and key phrase research.

Pay Rank for $ales securely with your Visa, MasterCard, Discover, or American Express credit card through the secure PayPal network. (Note: PayPal is an eBay company, and maintains a net free capital of US $ 50 Million).

You can link to the Rank for Sales web site as much as you like. Read our section on how your company can participate in our reciprocal link exchange program and increase your rankings in all the major search engines such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and all the others.

Powered by Sun Hosting Sponsored by Avantex Traffic stats by Site Clicks�

Site design by Mtl. Web D. Sponsored by Press Broadcast Sponsored by Blog Hosting.ca

Call Rank for Sales toll free from anywhere in the US or Canada: 1-800-631-3221
email: info@rankforsales.com