Not all countries go gaga for Google

Google hasn’t quite achieved global dominance in the world of search marketing, according to recent articles in Newsweek. Several countries have search engines that are more popular than Google and there are many start-ups and up-and-coming players in the pipeline.

Marketers would do well to look beyond Google to local search engines both throughout the U.S. and abroad. In some countries Google barely registers on the search engine radar.

Google has less than 2 percent of the search engine market in South Korea. Naver, the country’s most popular search engine, receives 100 million queries each day and over half of the population of 48 million has used it at some point. The site has been around for 5 years and has amassed a huge database of questions and answers to draw upon, 70 million at the last count.

In Japan, Yahoo is the most-used search engine, followed by Google, prompting the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to fund a program to develop the country’s own search technology.

Google only receives about 15 percent of Russian searches while local search engines Yandex and Rambler account for 55 percent and 17 percent respectively.

"In China, Japan, North Korea, locals are still beating Google," said Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh, via Newsweek. "Russians always considered Russian ballet and Russian space rockets the best in the world. Hopefully they have now added Yandex to the list."

Tags: Google, Naver, search engine, search marketing, search results, Yandex