Covario: Q2 search spend up 17%

Charles Gaylord, research analyst with Covario, notes spending was showed higher increases in the preceeding three quarters. European search spending showed the smallest increases (2% YoY, 1% Quarter to Quarter). Meanwhile the Asia-Pacific markets are showing strong growth - 41% YoY and 23% QoQ).

Moving forward Gaylord predicts the search marketing spend will show a 9-12% growth rate in EMEA, down from the 15-18% predictions from last fall. The markets pushing search spending in APAC, says Gaylord, are China, Japan, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Meanwhile new data from Hitwise notes that Google continues to lead the search wars with a 65% of search queries. Microsoft's Bing engine accounted for 28% of search queries for May 2012 and showed a 5% increase Year over Year.

"As automated search features have rolled out across the major search engines, we can expect to see one-word searches continue to increase as they have over the past year," said Simon Bradstock, general manager of Experian Hitwise. "The long tail is not going away, rather just becoming more intensified within the shorter queries, and in turn marketers need to focus more on how consumers start their searches."

Most May searches, finds Hitwise, were one-word queries.

Tags: Covario, Experian Hitwise, paid search, search marketing, search spending