Search Engine Usage with in the UK

2012 has been a huge year so far, especially when it comes to the growth of searches within the UK. Every month when the number of UK Internet visits going to search engines are looked at,this year has month after month outperformed the corresponding month from 2011. On average searches within the UK are rising by 93 million per month compared to the corresponding months from last year. Overall this equates to an average year-on-year growth of 4.3% in visits.

Last month almost 91% of the searches were carried out on Google. Due to searches getting bigger and bigger within the UK market, Google is ensuring that they keep their pace and maintain its dominance within the UK market.

 *Microsoft sites= Bing

When you look at the searches that have been carried out from January to July there have already been 15.8 billion visits to search engines within the UK alone, which by no means is a small number and that’s only half way through the year. In total, searches carried out in the UK has grown by 652 million so far in 2012. This means that there has been an extra 568 million visits to Google that wasn’t happening this time last year. This once again is showing that Google really are dominating in the UK.

Along with this not only are the searches growing, they are also changing. What I mean by this is the way UK Internet users are searching is becoming more complex with longer tailed keywords being searched on a more common bases. As you are able to see from the chart below, compared to last year the amount of searches for longer tailed keywords is growing and growing.

From this graph above you can see that search trends are changing slowly however it is still an indication that people are carrying out more sophisticated, web-savvy searches, and are moving away from the simple search phrases that are one or two words long. The shorter search phrases still make up a large majority of the UK searches, with around 50% of the searches which were carried out within July 2012 containing just one or two words.

Although, you may be able to notice that year-on-year, the amount of searches which include one, two or three words is failing, not at a fast rate, but it is still falling. Whereas the amount of searches that were carried out which contain four or more words is on the rise. As the amount of searches rises within the UK, it is very likely that long-tailed-keywords will become very important within the near future.