| European Stage set for Search Engine Growth |
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Search Engine usage is likely to take off in Europe
according to Nielsen NetRatings analysis. The growth of searching has in increased by the double the percentage that general internet use has. The actual figures show 110 million internet connections growing to 115 million in the year to April but regular searchers moved up from 79 million to 89 million. France was seen as the biggest market, 81 percent of users being regular searchers with the UK being very close behind at 80. Searchers in the USA stand at around 79 percent so it seems that people in Europe have caught on to the idea and are taking it up in big numbers. Unlike the USA though, the market is much more polarised in favor of Google. Across the continent and in the British Isles, some 69 percent of searches are done on Google, nearly double the percentage in North America but Yahoo, the number two here, with only just 8 percent share comes in fourth behind MSN and Ask Jeeves. The popularity of MSN could well be accounted for by it being the default search client on European issues of Internet Explorer. Several of the European countries now have their own domestic search engine operator and in France, Voila (translates to "There it is"), takes second place. In Italy there's a service called Virgillo, Eniro operates in Sweden and search.ch in Switzerland - all three take third spot in their domestic markets. A little surprisingly, the UK has no native search engine operator. The differences between American and British English are obviously not profound enough to discourage the Brits from using American services. In any case, both Google and Yahoo have local services for the UK and Ireland - mainly written in their vernacular and with their spellings. As a consequence of the booming search industry, revenues from targeted search advertising are expected to double. David Graham, MSN's Search Business Manager says that by 2010 search engine marketing revenues in Europe will be 2.7 billion euros, up from 1.4 billion euros in 2005. (A Euro is about $1.20). Reuben Dunn |
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