2013 looks set to be another record breaking year for search in the UK. James Murray, Digital Insights Manager, Experian Marketing Services takes a look at what advertisers can learn from the latest search trends.
2013 is proving to be another great year with 2.7 billion searches made on UK engines in January a slight decrease of 0.2% from December 2012
Year -on- year search activity has increased by 18% with over 400 million more visits going to search engines in January 2013 than in January 2012.
Usually after Christmas we see a drop in search activity as people return to their normal routines after the festive period. However, this year the drop off in visits to search engines between December and January has been marginal, which suggests 2013 is going to be another big year of growth online across all Internet activities. With more searches being conducted online, brands have an opportunity to understand exactly what their customers want through the searches they make. Those brands that can react quickly to changing consumer demand will be the ones that are ultimately successful in 2013 and beyond.
During January Google continued to see its lowest market share in the last five years, accounting for 88% of all searches made in the UK – a year-on-year drop of 3.18%. Microsoft Sites on the other hand, led by the bing engine continued to see an increase in its market share by 0.20% to hit a new high of 5.19% – a year-on-year increase of 1.41%.
Clearly, Google still maintains a huge competitive edge over the other search engines in the UK market. There are seven times more searches conducted on Google Sites than on all the other search engines combined. However, this is encouraging news for Microsoft as bing once again starts to gain some momentum and traction in the UK search market. Yahoo! and Ask Sites are also seeing a significant uplift in searches with a year-on-year increase of 0.99% and 0.68% respectively.
By James Murray
Digital Insights Manager
Experian Marketing Services
