Search Engines are an incredibly useful way to navigate the web and that’s why they’ve been so integral to our online experience for several decades now.
If you’re old enough to remember life before search engines (like us!) then you’ll remember having to use manually curated website directories and, if you’re lucky, they were ordered into categories!
Slightly younger and you’ll probably remember asking Jeeves all your questions…
Today it’s almost impossible to go a day without using a search engine whether that’s for personal use or as part of your day job.
‘Googling’ is now a recognised word for searching the internet.
The impact of search engines has been far reaching and is also now a multi billion pound business with platforms such as Google Ads contributing the majority of Google’s revenue.
This has also led to many new private search engines popping up, such as DuckDuckGo, that commit to never storing any personal data like Google does and using it to show you targeted ads.
As Search Engine Optimisation experts, we’ve decided to curate the ultimate list of search engine statistics that you need to know about in 2024 to give you an overview of the state of play.
Some are to be expected, such as Google owning 92% of the search engine market worldwide, but some are surprising, some eye-opening and some unbelievable!
So whether you’re reading this for some statistics to use in your own article or presentation, for some insight when you’re planning your companies marketing strategy or just for some light reading, please feel free to share and quote this guide elsewhere.
*This article is regularly updated with the latest search engine stats, make sure to bookmark!
UK Search Engine Stats 
In this section we take a look at the state of the UK search engine share, what Brits are searching for, what devices they’re searching on and much more.
- 86% of the UK search engine market share is held by Google, 10% Bing, 2% Yahoo! & 1% DuckDuckGo (Statista.com, 2021)
- 60% of adults in the UK are searching for information, as well as using social networks, online banking, or reading news sites. (Host Reviews, 2019)
- Google sites are most viewed and engaged with by UK audiences on mobile devices. (Host Reviews, 2019)
- Google’s monthly audience in the UK in 2017 was reported as 41.9 million unique monthly visitors in the month of March alone. (Host Reviews, 2019)
“86% of the UK search engine market share is held by Google”
US Search Engine Stats
In this section we take a look at the US search engine market, buying habits amongst Americans and the competition to Google’s throne.
- Google has a 88% market share in the US (Statcounter, 2021)
- 63% of Google’s search engine visits in the US are on mobile (99 Firms, 2021)
- Bing has a market share of 36.96% among US console users. (Backlinko, 2021)
- 10% of Americans own a Google smart speaker (Fit Small Business, 2021)
“63% of Google’s search engine visits in the US are on mobile”
Global Search Engine Stats
Let’s take a look at how search engines rank worldwide, how other countries compare with the UK & US and some global trends to be aware of.
- Nearly 93% of all web traffic comes through search engines. (99 Firms, 2021)
- Google owns 92% of the search engine market worldwide (Statcounter, 2021)
- Bing currently has a 2.71% share of the worldwide search engine market (Backlinko, 2021)
- Globally, Google accounts for 76% and 86% of desktop and mobile search traffic, respectively. (99 Firms, 2021)
“Nearly 93% of all web traffic comes through search engines”
Google Stats
Everyone knows that Google is the daddy when it comes to search engines but how much of the share do they actually have and is this changing in recent years?
- Google owns 92% of the search engine market worldwide (Statcounter, 2021)
- Google processes around 70,000 search queries per second (99 Firms, 2021)
- 5% of all searches have never been searched before on Google (99 Firms, 2021)
- Google takes into account over 200 factors before delivering the best results to its users (99 Firms)
“Google processes around 70,000 search queries per second”
Bing Stats
It’s everyone’s 2nd favourite search engine but exactly how popular is Bing? How do Bing users behaviour differ to that of Google’s? And will they ever be able to compete with Google?
- Bing gets more than 1 billion visits each month (Backlinko, 2021)
- ‘Facebook’ is the most popular search term on Bing US, ‘Google’ is the most popular worldwide (Backlinko, 2021)
- Visitors to the Bing website spend an average of 3 minutes 14 seconds on the site each day. (Alexa, 2021)
- Bing is ranked 35th in global internet engagement as of February 2021. In the US, Bing is ranked 15th. (Alexa, 2021)
“The most popular search term entered into Bing worldwide is ‘Google'”
Search Engine Marketing Stats
With all this website traffic, search engines have become big business. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) & Pay per Click Advertising (PPC) have become huge industries. Find out some startling stats on search engine marketing below.
- For every £1 that a business spends on Google Search and Ads, it makes £1 in profit. (99 Firms, 2021)
- Microsoft generated $7.74 billion in search advertising revenue in the 2020 fiscal year. (Backlinko, 2021)
- Amazon has 2x more product search volume than Google (Fit Small Business, 2021)
- 81% of people search online for a product or service (Smart Insights, 2020)
- Google Ads is Google’s biggest revenue stream and in 2020 it generated $104 billion making up 57% of Alphabet’s total revenue.
“81% of people search online for a product or service”
Sources
- https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share
- https://www.statista.com/statistics/280269/market-share-held-by-search-engines-in-the-united-kingdom/
- https://hostreviews.co.uk/google-statistics-uk/
- https://99firms.com/blog/search-engine-statistics/
- https://backlinko.com/bing-users
- https://fitsmallbusiness.com/google-search-statistics/
- https://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/18/how-does-google-make-money-advertising-business-breakdown-.html