Most used search engine by country

In some parts of the world, Google gets less of a foothold, if at all. There, people use other search engines to get answers to all their questions. What about all that exactly?

Most used search engines in the Netherlands and Europe

Let's look at the most used search engines in the Netherlands. Here Google holds nearly 93% of the market share. Bing (3.5%), DuckDuckGo (1.2%) and Yahoo! (1%) follow with very appropriate distance.

It is not much different in the countries around us. Even in Belgium and the UK, Google has about 93% of the market share. In Germany, that number is at 90%. As in the UK, Bing is used slightly more there. And also the Russian Yandex, with 1%, is not doing badly in Germany.

If we look at all of Europe, we see similar figures as far as Google and Bing are concerned. Furthermore, it seems that Yandex with 2% is doing a bit better overall and DuckDuckGo with 0.5% just a bit less.

America

In the U.S., Google is also the largest with about 89%. Bing represents 6.5% there and Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo both about 2%.

Looking a little more at South America, we see a slight difference. Google is used a little more there (96%) and Bing (2%), Yahoo (1%) and DuckDuckGo (0.1%) a little less.

Africa

Google is also the most used search engine in Africa with almost 97%. In second place is Bing with just over 2% and in third place we find a newcomer with 0.4% of searches: Petal Search.

Petal Search is a widget on Huawei phones that can be used just like a search engine to find news, images, apps and more ... but directly from the home screen.

Russia

We do see fiercer competition in Russia (and some other former Eastern bloc countries). Indeed, there Yandex is the most used search engine with almost 60% market share. The remaining 40% go to Google.

Not surprising, when you consider that Yandex - which incidentally has its headquarters in the Netherlands for tax reasons - is not just a search engine. Like Google, for example, it also offers music streaming, e-mail, cloud storage and translation services.

China

Google has been unavailable in China since 2010 because the company did not want to comply with state requirements, including censoring all kinds of information. As a result, other search engines are being used in China.

Which ones? Mainly Baidu (40%), Yandex (22%) and Bing (19%). Yet via-via Google is also still used in about 5% of cases. That's just slightly less than Tencent's search engine Sogou (8%) and just slightly more than Haosou (3%).

So a fairly splintered landscape!

Asia (other) & Oceania

By the way, in Asian countries such as Japan, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand, Google is by far the largest with an average of 92% of usage. And also in Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, people mainly use Google to look up information on the Internet.

Search engines such as Yandex (2%) and Bing (1.5%) do not really come close.

TLDR;

Google is the most widely used search engine almost everywhere. Only in Russia (Yandex) and China (Baidu) is this different. Competing search engines like Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo often lag far behind.

And it will remain so for some time to come.

This article was written on Feb. 29, 2021 and updated on May 14, 2023