This first session stars Massimo Burgio of Global Search Interactive, Robin Goad of Hitwise, and Piers Stobbs of ComScore Europe, and is moderated by Chris Sherman.

Robin Goad was first to speak.

He showed a bar chart of market share for October for the top 4 SEs in each country for the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. The chart shows that Google is not as dominant in all countries - i.e. Hong Kong < 40%, Yahoo is ~ the same level as Google in HK.

The next graphic showed the number of words per search query by country. In the US the tail is longer, in the comparison countries, the UK has the shortest tail.

The trend for branded search is universal, it dominates everywhere. Social networks have taken over as the most searched for brands. 1.25% of ll searches in the UK are for Bebo. 4% of all searches in the UK are for Bebo, myspace, Facebook and ebay.

The next graphic displlayed the differences in a vertical - travel. Showing search terms in the UK, US and Australia. The US has a much greater % of searches for maps. In Australia more people search for flights than holidays. The UK has more searches for price comparison / travel agency sites. In the UK people search for airports, in the US and Australia people tend to search for airlines.

Image search is most popular in the US, followed by the UK and Australia. Hong Kong has a much lower % of image searches. People are now spendinng less time on image search - shows that the right images are coming up more and more now.

The UK is more reliant on search for traffic generation. Followed by Australia and the US. Hong Kong has a much lower % of search traffic, with Social Networks providing a much higher % for them.

Next up Piers Stobbs

The perception is that Google rules the world of search globally. They do have a 63% worldwide, which lends credence to that perception, Yahoo comes in 2nd, Baidu 3rd…

In September there were 1.4m searches per minute. 19.4 billion searches in Asia Pacific, 19.2 billion searches in Europe, and only 15.3 billion searches in North America… 3/4 of all searches happen outside the US. Yet Google only generates 50% of revenue outside the US, much bigger opportunity for monetization.

In europe an average of 91 searches per user per month, the US only 74…

Google is actually stronger in France(89%) and Germany (93%) than in the UK(82%) market share.

In Russia, the top SE is Yandex (57%) - a local Search Engine (Yet Another Index), Google only has a 23% market share. 3rd is Rambler -14%. Yahoo only has a 3% share, and MSN ~1%.

In China - Baidu has 61%, Google 20%, Yahoo 7%.

South Korea - Naver has a 74% market share, Daum 12%, Yahoo 7%, Google only 4%, Empas 3% - the 3 local players have over 89% of all searches in SK.

So all in all there are markets where Google is not the leader, so you need to make sure that you look at the countries that you’re targeting to make sure that you’re aiming for the right market for your international campaigns.

Piers feels as though UI improvements to SEs is the main way that SEs will gain market share.

Specialization / vertical search are other opportunities.

Last up was Massimo, his discussion is going to focus on SEMPO and the work that they do around the world, through their committees and working groups.
SEMPO groups drive local initiatives in local markets. Focus on each market, partner with colleges and universities.
Look for the SEMPO annual research to be released early 2008 (the call for the questionnaire went out this week).

One of the Q&A questions was related to the impact of social network sites on the global search landscape.

More visits to Social Networks than to web based mail applications. Social Networks have now become home bases for people. 1/5 of all page impressions are on Social Networks in the UK, only 1/10 are on search sites…

Filed under: Education and Training on Friday, November 16th, 2007 by Simon Heseltine |
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