If you ask any European search marketer about the differences between the European market and the US, the first thing they will most likely say is "in Europe, it's all about Google." Indeed, Hitwise UK data shows that Google accounted for 85% of UK search query volume as of October 2007.
The breakdown of search engine spend for Efficient Frontier Europe also shows this dominance - in October 2007, nearly 88% of our UK client spend occured on Google Adwords or AdSense. The other European countries in which our clients are advertising (France, Spain, Italy and Germany) show an even greater trend toward Google, which claims 94% of client search spend in those countries.
Although Google dominates in Europe, just as in the US, it's important not to discount the other engines in your international campaigns. That additional 15% of search queries not performed on Google can add to your bottom line, and provide good learning opportunities. MSN offers demographic targeting and high quality traffic in the UK, and Yahoo! Search is improving the quality of their traffic with site exclusion and CPC discounts. However, given the growth of Google's paid search share in the US, as I showed in this post, it makes me wonder how long it will be before Google reaches 90% share in the UK.
On Monday at SES Chicago, Efficient Frontier President James Beriker shared this data along with best practices for EU campaigns in the "Search Around the World: Europe and Latin America" panel . Marty Weintraub covered the session here.
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