Google accounts for 92% of UK searches

Each month here at Hitwise we look at the top players in the search and social markets and benchmark the top websites against each other. Google has been dominant in the UK search market for many years now but in June 2011 Google Sites achieved an unprecedented 92% market share of all searches conducted by UK Internet users.

What’s interesting is that although Google is increasing its dominance within search, search engines overall are becoming less significant as a source of traffic for websites. Search has historically accounted for around 40% of visits to all websites but the most recent figures for upstream visits to All Categories show that search accounts for 34.29% of all traffic delivered to websites in June 2011.

This is not to say that search is on the decline – far from it. As Internet usage continues to grow, more searches are being conducted online every single day. However, search now accounts for a smaller proportion of overall traffic being delivered to websites, and that is because of the growth of other traffic sources, namely social media.

Analysis of the top social networking sites for June shows that Facebook has recovered after three months of declining visits, and YouTube is still growing strongly.

Facebook accounted for 53.72% of all UK Internet visits to social networks in June, growing its market share of visits to the Social Networking and Forums category by 0.11%. YouTube was the fastest moving social network for the fourth consecutive month, accounting for 20.76% of all UK Internet visits to social networks.

Social networks are now the second biggest source of traffic to all websites online after search. In June 12.54% of UK Internet visits to All Categories came from a social network, and the vast majority of that traffic is coming from Facebook and YouTube. Social networks still have a long way to go before they reach parity with search engines as a source of traffic, but the gap between the two is definitely closing. If you want to find out more about the latest search and social analysis you can look at the press release on our website.