A report released by comScore, this weeks found flthat Google has retained its position as the leader among search engines in the UK.
Of course this is hardly news as they have always been way ahead of the competition.
As of April 2008, Google had the largest market share, accounting for about 74 percecnt of all searches conducted in the UK. The second site in line, eBay, lags far behind, with only 6 percent of total searches, followed by Yahoo! with 4.3percent and Microsoft in fourth place with just about 3.4 percent.
A detailed analysis of the subject reveals that there has been very little change in the market position of the various search engines between the months of March and April 2008. For instance, Google had a market share of 74.4 percent in March, and 74.2 percent in April.
The only new entrant in the U.K. top 10 list this year is the social media site, Facebook, at 6th place with 1.8 percent of searches conducted in April.
Among other interesting findings, is the fact that the U.K. beats all other European nations, in terms of the volume of searches carried out. 4.1 billion searches were conducted in the UK during the month. 31.2 million Britishers carried out at least one search in April, but on an average 130 searches were conducted by per person, during the month.
As is the case with all numbers released from research corporations such as comScore, these findings have also been questioned. Most agencies and webmasters in the UK report seeing more than 80 percent referrals from Google. Moreover, the inclusion of eBay, Facebook and RightMove in the same category stretches the definition of the “search” market too far for some.
The graph below charts the market share of the leading search engines based on percentage of all searches carried out:
