Tiago Bianchi
Research expert covering internet & gaming in Latin America and Spain
Online search market in Europe - statistics & facts
Known for its diversity in culture and languages, Europe was long unified by its preference for Google as its main search engine. Simultaneously, the region also provided a fertile landscape where alternative search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex have been able to thrive. In addition to stronger competition, higher demands for privacy and sustainability from local customers and the regulations of the EU Commission posed bigger demands against the Californian giant. Also, the rise of AI-powered search trend might import some of the ongoing market challenges to European soil, as the panorama of the region’s search market becomes diverse and complex and search providers must navigate to profit from the region’s rich digital advertising industry.
Google’s challengers
Google holds a share of over 90 percent in the European search market across all devices, even higher than in its home market, the United States. Similarly, Bing is Google’s main contender in Europe, with a relatively successful share of over three percent in markets like Germany and France, each generating more than three percent of the Microsoft-owned engine world traffic. Surprisingly, Russian engine Yandex has seen an increase in its market share, trumping the Bing-supported Yahoo! and ranking third in the European market across all devices Meanwhile, sustainability and privacy-focused Ecosia and DuckDuckGo rank among the most accepted alternatives in local markets, registering some of their biggest market shares worldwide.Regulation over search engines
Adding to stronger local competition, the regulatory landscape of the European Union poses fundamental challenges for the Californian search giant. Anti-trust fines issued by the EU Commission against Google have already cost the company more than 4 billion euros, a landmark penalty even without considering sanctions from individual national authorities. Meanwhile, higher privacy demands from European customers translated into the right to be forgotten (RTBF) legislation, one of the most unique and interesting aspects of the region’s search in the region in which users can request search engines and other organizations to delist information related to them. So far, over 1.2 million RTBF requests from 34 countries have been submitted to Google and Bing. Western Europe is also where the right to be forgotten is most adopted, concentrating more than 561,000 requests to date and collecting more appeals than all other regions combined.The power of advertising
The enormous challenges of the European search market are compensated for the enormous profit coming from the region’s digital advertising market. Online search was the second-largest digital advertising format in Europe in 2022, representing over 43 percent of the industry expenditure. With an explosive growth after the COVID-19 pandemic, spending in the sector verged over 40 billion U.S. dollars in the same year, despite a lower average spending per user in European markets lower than in the United States or the UK. Despite the enormous challenges, the extensiveness and plurality of its online population ultimately prove that the European region constitutes a mosaic of indispensable markets for search companies.
