Search Engine Market Share: Who’s Leading the Race
Google may dominate the search engine market, but knowing the search market share can be helpful — especially if you’re an ecommerce store owner looking to rank for certain countries or devices.
When people say “optimize for search engines,” Google is always the first search engine that comes to mind.
Newsflash: There are other search engines out there, too.
These top search engines receive tons of traffic… but they don’t always appear as popular as Google.
Let’s do a deep dive into the overall search engine market share and how it looks based on regions, counties, and the world.
TL;DR: Search Engine Market Share
- Google dominates the search engine market share, averaging an 86–96% market share worldwide.
- Google’s global search engine market share was 91.88% as of June 2022.
- Baidu reigns supreme in China with a 75.54% market share.
- Unlike other countries, the search market in Russia has two main players: Google and Yandex.
- More people use Google on their mobile devices than on desktop computers (95% versus 85%).
Meet the Search Engines
Google was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998.
Its name was derived from the word “googol,” a mathematical term for what we get when we multiply 10 by itself 100 times (it’s 1 with 100 zeros after it).
Before Google and its parent company, Alphabet, became the third trillion-dollar valued company ever created, Page and Brin struggled to sell it.
They offered to sell Google to Excite (another internet company) in 1999 for $750,000, but Excite rejected their offer. Only five years later, Google raised $1.67 billion during its initial public offering (IPO) in 2004.
Fast forward to now, and besides optimizing its algorithms to return the best results to user queries, Google is also engaged in businesses like:
- Software products (like Google Workspace and the famous Gmail)
- Search advertising (Google AdWords)
- Infrastructure (Google Cloud)
- Self-driving cars (Waymo)
Number of searches: As of 2022, Google processes more than 100,000 search queries per second. That’s more than 8.5 billion daily searches.
Annual revenue: In 2021, Google’s annual revenue hit $257 billion. It’s the first time it broke the $200 billion mark.
Microsoft Bing
Microsoft introduced Bing in 2009 to replace its previous offerings, Live Search, Windows Live Search, and MSN Search. And in 2020, it rebranded Bing to Microsoft Bing.
Microsoft developed MSN Search as an answer to Google. But since Windows Live Search’s launch in 2006, Microsoft’s search engines have been trailing behind Google.
In 2010, Bing started powering Yahoo’s search results. It also struck a deal with Facebook in 2010 to give users personalized search results; it added Facebook social data to its search results so users could see what their friends “Liked.”
Reviews from SerpWatch and Search Engine Journal say Bing has better image search capabilities than Google. Bing enables users to filter images by size, color, or type.
Number of searches: Although Bing doesn’t have as many users as Google, it receives over 1 billion monthly visits as of June 2022.
Annual revenue: Microsoft Bing generated $8.53 billion in search advertising revenue in 2021 — up 10.2% from $7.74 billion in 2020.
Yahoo
Before Google reigned supreme, Yahoo was the king of the internet.
Jerry Yang and David Filo founded Yahoo in 1994. They originally named the website “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” before changing it to Yahoo, which stands for “Yet Another Hierarchical Organized Oracle.”
At its peak in the early 2000s, Yahoo was valued at $125 billion.
Yahoo was such a force that Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin offered to sell Google to Yahoo for $1 million in 1998, but Yahoo turned them down.
In 2000, Yahoo eventually got Google to power their web search. In 2002, Yahoo then offered to buy Google for $3 billion. This time, Google rejected them, saying they were worth at least $5 billion. Yahoo eventually dropped Google in 2004 for their own search technology.
By 2008, Google was already dominating the search market. So, to overthrow the search giant, Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo for $44.6 billion (or $31 per share), which was a 62% premium over Yahoo’s closing price. Microsoft later rescinded its offer after Yahoo said it was “too low.”
In 2016, Yahoo was sold to Verizon for $5 billion. Verizon had already acquired AOL in 2015 for $4.4 billion, so it combined Yahoo and AOL under its “Oath” brand.
In 2021, Apollo Global Management acquired Verizon Media (formerly known as Oath), whose portfolio included AOL and Yahoo, for $5 billion — half of what Verizon paid for both AOL and Yahoo.
Number of searches: As of 2022, Yahoo has over 700 million monthly active users and receives 3.4 billion monthly visits.
Annual revenue: In 2021, Yahoo earned 873.8 million euros (about $920 million USD).
Baidu
Baidu was founded and incorporated by Robert Li and Eric Xu in 2000. It’s headquartered in Beijing’s Haidan district and is China’s largest search engine.
Li and Xu launched Baidu as an independent website with $1.2 million in funding from prominent venture capital firms Integrity Partners and Peninsula Capital.
Baidu’s name was taken from a Chinese poem: “The Green Jade Table in the Lantern Festival.” Written by Xin Qiji (1140–1207), the poem talks about the search for one’s dreams despite distractions… which is essentially what a search engine does.
Number of searches: As of June 2022, Baidu receives 5.4 billion monthly visits.
Annual revenue: Baidu reported annual revenue of $19.5 billion in 2021.
Yandex
Yandex.ru is a Russian search engine started in 1993 by Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich. Its name stands for “Yet Another iNDEXer.”
Yandex was officially launched in 1997 and introduced contextual advertisement in 1998. It was registered as a standalone company in 2000.
Between 2000 and 2011, Yandex focused on building its presence in locations such as Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkiye. In 2011, Yandex went public on the New York Stock Exchange with an initial public offering (IPO) of $1.3 billion.
The advantage of Yandex over other search engines is its ability to understand Russian inflection for search queries — a crucial feature since Russian words can take almost 20 different endings to indicate their relationship to one another.
Number of searches: As of June 2022, Yandex receives 3.8 billion monthly visits.
Annual revenue: Yandex made 356 billion Russian rubles (equivalent to $6.74 billion USD) in 2021.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is an internet search engine founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008.
What sets DuckDuckGo apart from others is its commitment to protecting its users’ privacy. DuckDuckGo doesn’t collect or store your personal information or target you with ads. Its default setting is private — unlike other search engines, which typically only keep your information private when you use incognito mode.
Number of searches: As of June 2022, DuckDuckGo averages at least 92 million visits per day.
Annual revenue: DuckDuckGo has been profitable since 2014 and makes over $100 million in annual revenue.
What Is Google’s Search Engine Market Share?
Google’s market share fluctuates between 86% and 96%, depending on the location. It has dominated the search engine market share since it was introduced in 1997. Its global search engine market share, as of June 2022, stands at 91.88%.
Where Do the Other Search Engines Stand?
According to StatCounter, as of June 2022, Google’s global search engine market share was at 91.88%, with Bing following at 3.19%, Yandex at 1.52%, Yahoo at 1.33%, Baidu at 0.76%, and DuckDuckGo at 0.64%. Other search engines make up the remaining 0.68%.
SimilarWeb data shows that Google tops the global search engine market share at 90.63%, with Yahoo following at 3.25%, Bing at 2.88%, Yandex at 0.45%, Naver at 0.44%, and other search engines at 2.34%.
Search Engine Market Share: According to Device (as of June 2022)
In October 2016, mobile traffic finally overtook desktop traffic.
Since then, search engines have tweaked their algorithms to favor mobile content and reward mobile responsiveness.
We can compare search engine market share across devices to see whether the device plays a factor in usage. For example, Google tops the search engine market share for desktop and mobile devices, but it exerts its dominance over mobile search, with a 93–95% market share.
This suggests that either most mobile phones use Google as the default search engine or Google’s mobile search offers a smoother experience than others.
Desktop
- Google — 84.73%
- Bing — 8.66%
- Yahoo — 2.59%
- Yandex — 1.49%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.90%
- Baidu — 0.64%
- Others — 0.99%
- Google — 85.56%
- Bing — 7.61%
- Yahoo — 2.54%
- Yandex — 0.75%
- Naver — 0.72%
- Others — 2.81%
Mobile Devices
- Google — 95.31%
- Yandex — 1.54%
- Baidu — 0.83%
- Yahoo — 0.73%
- Bing — 0.53%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.5%
- Others — 0.56%
- Google — 93.38%
- Yahoo — 3.63%
- Bing — 0.35%
- Naver — 0.3%
- Yandex — 0.27%
- Others — 2.08%
Search Engine Market Share: According to Country (as of June 2022)
Let’s look at the search engine market share for countries with large internet user bases.
Google dominates most countries besides China and Russia. Baidu dominates China with a 75.54% market share (vs. Google’s 3.56%), while Google and Yandex share Russia’s search engine market.
United States (U.S.)
- Google — 86.99%
- Bing — 7.02%
- Yahoo — 3.11%
- DuckDuckGo — 2.42%
- Yandex — 0.12%
- Ecosia — 0.10%
- Others — 0.24%
United Kingdom (U.K.)
- Google — 91.74%
- Bing — 5.14%
- Yahoo — 1.64%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.87%
- Ecosia — 0.32%
- Yandex — 0.15%
- Others — 0.14%
Canada
- Google — 91.18%
- Bing — 5.51%
- Yahoo — 1.58%
- DuckDuckGo — 1.31%
- Yandex — 0.12%
- Ecosia — 0.10%
- Others — 0.20%
Australia
- Google – 93.37%
- Bing — 4.63%
- Yahoo — 0.84%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.80%
- Ecosia — 0.15%
- Yandex — 0.08%
- Others — 0.13%
China
- Baidu — 75.54%
- Bing — 11.47%
- Sogou — 4.83%
- Google — 3.56%
- Haosou — 2.20%
- Shenma — 1.74%
- Others — 0.66%
Russian Federation
- Yandex — 49.02%
- Google — 48.08%
- Mail.ru — 1.24%
- Bing — 0.84%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.40%
- Yahoo — 0.31%
- Others — 0.11%
Search Engine Market Share: According to Region (as of June 2022)
Google’s dominance is also evident when we look at the search engine market share of different regions — especially in South America, where 96.35% of all internet users patronize Google.
North America
- Google — 88.38%
- Bing — 6.48%
- Yahoo — 2.66%
- DuckDuckGo — 2.01%
- Yandex — 0.11%
- Ecosia — 0.10%
- Others — 0.26%
South America
- Google — 96.35%
- Bing — 2.35%
- Yahoo — 0.95%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.12%
- Petal Search — 0.08%
- Ecosia — 0.08%
- Others — 0.07%
Europe
- Google — 91.91%
- Bing — 3.87%
- Yandex — 1.75%
- Yahoo — 0.98%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.58%
- Ecosia — 0.33%
- Others — 0.58%
Asia
- Google — 92.40%
- Yandex — 2.40%
- Baidu — 1.63%
- Bing — 1.54%
- Yahoo — 1.08%
- Naver — 0.37%
- Others — 0.58%
Africa
- Google — 95.90%
- Bing — 2.86%
- Petal Search — 0.44%
- Yahoo — 0.35%
- Ananzi — 0.24%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.09%
- Others — 0.12%
Oceania
- Google — 93.36%
- Bing — 4.63%
- Yahoo — 0.86%
- DuckDuckGo — 0.80%
- Ecosia — 0.15%
- Yandex — 0.08%
- Others — 0.12%
Search Engine Market Share
Google is the undisputed market leader in online search, taking the majority of the search engine market share. But that doesn’t mean you should ignore the other popular search engines, especially if you want your website to rank in China or Russia.
The recipe for success is straightforward: Search engines want to bring users the most relevant search results. So, create quality content and follow best practices for building a user-friendly website to rank your website on all search engines.
Start by choosing a good web hosting provider. It’s one of the things most people scrimp on without knowing that cheap web hosting actually prompts you to spend more. Cheap hosting is often slow, which can result in search engines penalizing your website.
Check out Kinsta’s premium web hosting plans to reap the benefits of performance-focused, reliable website hosting for your ecommerce stores.