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Google’s share of the global search engine market fell below 90% for the first time since 2015, according to Statcounter. Google’s global search market share was below 90% during each of the last three months of 2024.
Data. Here’s a screenshot of the search market share for 2024, which shows Google falling below 90% – to 89.34% in October; 89.99% in November; and 89.73% in December:
And here are the last three months in which Google’s market share is below 90%, in 2015: 89.62% in January; 89.47% in February; 89.52% in March:
Why we care. As the old saying goes, one is a point, two is a line, and three is a trend. Clearly, we are seeing a trend where Google is losing search market share.
Where’s the drop? Google’s search market share appears to be fairly consistent in most regions except Asia, which appears to have been a large reason for Google’s overall decline.
the fall of the USA? Google’s market share of the US search market peaked at 90.37% in November, but fell to 87.39% in December. In the other months of 2024, Google’s US search market share was fairly consistent, varying between 86-88%.
The big picture. Google has been under fire for almost two years now for the quality of its search results despite its dominance thanks to it illegal monopoly status with an overwhelming and consistent share of 90%-92+% for almost a decade.
- Are we now finally starting to see newbies going to other search engines? This will be an area of interest to watch in the coming months.
Where did the searchers go? Have they gone to AI reporting engines, such as ChatGPT Search and Perplexity? Well, not the way Statcounter measures things. Statcounter mainly tracks Microsoft Bing, Yandex, Yahoo and Baidu, but also has another group called “other”, which includes DuckDuckGo and Ecosia.
Bing, Yandex and Yahoo each gained some of Google’s lost share. Runner-up Microsoft Bing hovered at or just below 4% in the last five months of 2024.
You deeper. Optimizing LLM for B2B SEO: An Overview
Bug or blip? You may remember how much you looked forward to search marketing and SEO in the adjacent space Google seemed to have lost a significant amount of search market share in April. However, Google’s massive loss of search market share wasn’t real and Statcounter revised its data.
In this case, the decline seems plausible as Google was consistently below 90% in October, November and December.