Tiago Bianchi
Research expert covering internet & gaming in Latin America and Spain
Online search market in the United States - statistics & facts
Home to the world's biggest, most used, and most visited engines worldwide, the United States is the global powerhouse of the online search market. With local search advertising revenues amounting to more than 118.8 billion U.S. dollars in 2023, the country hosts the world’s most lucrative market of its kind, demonstrating its exceptional and successful reach inside and outside its borders. Home to world leaders like Google and Bing, the country recently turned into the center stage for the global race towards artificial intelligence powered-online search engines, a trend that represents the biggest swing in an industry that seemed stable for more than a decade.
Despite Google’s dominance, the U.S. represents one of the most diverse markets for online search. Bing remains the oldest and closest contender to Google, recently registering its highest market share to date across all devices. Its position is also strengthened by deals with Verizon Media, the company that hosts Yahoo! and AOL search and web properties, whose tools follow in rankings of leading search engines inside and outside the United States. Meanwhile, newcomers like DuckDuckGo and foreign players like Ecosia have seen their local usage increase over the last years, especially due to demands for privacy and sustainability.
Hosting the leading companies involved in the race, the country already showcases the shifts in how online search is done. While most American customers use generative AI primarily to answer questions, it is projected that over 13 million adults in the U.S. already use such tools as their first option for online searches. Especially appealing to younger generations of Americans, advertisers have already noticed the overall effectiveness of chat-based advertising in online search, eyeing the pillar of the biggest search advertising market worldwide. Nevertheless, capturing the audience of the world’s most strategic online search market is decisive for the industry’s biggest names to fully capitalize on the momentum of the AI-powered search trend.
The world’s biggest online search market
Synonym to the act of searching for information online, the sheer success of digital goliath Google would be no different in its homeland. Holding a market share of over 86 percent across all devices in the United States, the California-based giant consistently handled over 60 percent of all search queries in the country since 2008. And while Google Search is the fourth most popular app on mobile devices in the country, Google Sites remain by far the most visited web properties in the United States.Despite Google’s dominance, the U.S. represents one of the most diverse markets for online search. Bing remains the oldest and closest contender to Google, recently registering its highest market share to date across all devices. Its position is also strengthened by deals with Verizon Media, the company that hosts Yahoo! and AOL search and web properties, whose tools follow in rankings of leading search engines inside and outside the United States. Meanwhile, newcomers like DuckDuckGo and foreign players like Ecosia have seen their local usage increase over the last years, especially due to demands for privacy and sustainability.
AI has entered the game
Despite Google’s power and stable position for over 20 years, the AI-powered online search trend set by ChatGPT has shaken the grounds of the online search industry. Google’s troubled release of its now-rebranded Gemini chatbot allowed companies like OpenAI and its partnerships with Bing to take the head start on the release of chatbots powered by generative artificial intelligence (GAI) that, among many uses, provide search results in a conversational format. Therefore, the development of search engines and large-language models became the major areas of investments in generative AI in the United States, amounting to over 13 billion U.S. dollars.Hosting the leading companies involved in the race, the country already showcases the shifts in how online search is done. While most American customers use generative AI primarily to answer questions, it is projected that over 13 million adults in the U.S. already use such tools as their first option for online searches. Especially appealing to younger generations of Americans, advertisers have already noticed the overall effectiveness of chat-based advertising in online search, eyeing the pillar of the biggest search advertising market worldwide. Nevertheless, capturing the audience of the world’s most strategic online search market is decisive for the industry’s biggest names to fully capitalize on the momentum of the AI-powered search trend.
