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It is hard to think there are places where Google is not number one in the search business, but it is true. There are five countries recently profiled for bucking the trend. It’s important to know the below web sites, especially if you are targeting customers in these regions. (Detailed stats from Comscore)
1- Yandex, which handles 46 per cent of search queries in Russia
2-Seznam, which controls 63 per cent of Czech searches
3- Baidu in China has about 66.5 per cent of internet searches.
4- Naver in South Korea has about 57.7 per cent of internet searches, and Lycos is number 2.
5-Yahoo! Japan, the only place where Yahoo ! beat Google, claims slightly more than half of the local search market.
How did these five anomalies occur? In the most cases, these competitors, got in early, had technology that worked better (especially with local languages), and built upon their strong brand with other local businesses. It’s important to be aware of these properties especially when their are potential customers from these countries.
Nevertheless, even beyond these five countries, it is important to look beyond Google. Using Alexa data ( as an interesting but flawed source), we can confirm important facts about Canadian and Mexican searches. For example, while Yahoo is number two behind Google in the USA, this is not true in Canada and Mexico. In Canada, right behind Google, we find Microsoft and the MSN brand. For an outsider, not from Canada, this might seem weird, but it isn’t if you have some insight. In this case, MSN has a partnership with Bell Sympatico, one of the largest ISP’s in Canada. Their modem software by default installs MSN search on the homepage. For the average user, they will not bother (or know) how to change that. So in Canada, being well placed in MSN (and Live) is important. The same can be said if you are targeting Mexican customers. The MSN property is much more important than Yahoo there because of MSN’s strategic partnership with BuscaPe. As a matter of fact, MSN is a much more important destination that Yahoo in over a dozen countries. It is flawed to assume that all your search engine strategy should focus solely on Google and Yahoo! In the end, if you rely on searches from certain countries/ languages, it is important not to ignore SEO and advertising efforts on these secondary search engines. In this case, Alexa country lists can help you with your research as a starting point.
If you need help in the implementation contact us at Mark8t E-Marketing Solutions today!
Beyond Google: Don’t Ignore Local Search Engines is a post from: Mark8t: Marketing And More
