The startling results show that in February 2006, Google referred an average of 74.67 percent of all U.K searches, which was far in excess of its nearest rival, Yahoo, who achieved a search engine referral share of 9.3 percent. This market share figure managed to exceed both the US average for the month (55.39 percent), as well as the global average (62.4 percent). With online search hitting all time highs - 5.7 billion in the US alone from January '05 to January '06, a rise of 39% across the year according to Nielsen/NetRatings - the potential to reach online users through the Google search engine remains key to search marketing.
It seems that, in the UK, Google has truly become synonymous with internet searching - even more so than in America. Rand Schulman, chief marketing officer for WebSideStory, said of the UK statistics: "When people think of search, they think of Google".
The traffic figures, which cover both organic results and paid listings, indicate that search engine marketing and optimisation strategies currently need to primarily focus on being Google-centric, while still not completely neglecting the likes of Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Ask.
