Tiago Bianchi
Research expert covering internet & gaming in Latin America and Spain
Online search market worldwide - Statistics & Facts
Search engines have become an integral part of our digital lives, helping users to consolidate and organize the vast amount of online information at a fast pace. These powerful tools are not only accessed by individuals looking for content and answers, but are also utilized by companies investing millions in advertising with search providers. For over two decades, Google has dominated the market, leaving other competitors struggling to match its reach and revenue outside their local markets. However, the industry is poised for a significant transformation with the launch of new AI-powered search tools, namely chatbots and AI assistants which allow users to interact with search engines in a conversational format and are already transforming the way we understand online search and how companies offer this service.
Google made its empire over advertising through its search service, commanding a market that generated over 279.3 billion U.S. dollars of revenues in 2023. But as the company sees disappointing revenues of Google network websites for the first time, something is different in the realm of online search. With many users already preferring generative AI for searching online information first, many companies heard the call and saw 13 billion U.S. dollars invested in generative AI for broad usage, namely search engines and large language models (LLM), in 2023. In little more than a year, the AI-powered search trend proved itself strong enough to make a decade-long established internet market scrounge for answers on how to withstand and adapt to change.
Alternatives to Google
Despite its initial impact, chatbot ChatGPT has yet a long way to go to reshape the already complex environment of the online search industry. Google still represents over 90 percent of the search engine market worldwide across all devices, handling over 60 percent of all search queries in the United States and generating over 206.5 billion U.S. dollars in ad revenues from its search engine and YouTube. But while it remains the top player, alternative search engines still managed to overshadow the tech giant within their local markets. In countries like Germany and France, online users are increasingly choosing privacy- or sustainability-focused alternatives such as DuckDuckGo or Ecosia due to data and privacy concerns. And while domestic competitors like Baidu in China and Naver in South Korea are the tools of choice for its citizens, Yandex surpassed Russia’s domains and has now the third largest market share among search engines worldwide.Industry trend: AI in search
There has been little talk about online searches that do not involve the transformations made possible by ChatGPT. The service took only five days to reach more than a million users and became the fastest internet service to reach this milestone, consistently generating over 10 million monthly downloads for its mobile app. Its success has already likely taken a toll on Google’s worldwide lead, which saw its smallest search market share on desktops registered in more than a decade. Its long-time and biggest competitor Bing, which supported and integrated ChatGPT into its service, has in turn surpassed 10 percent of market share on desktop devices.Google made its empire over advertising through its search service, commanding a market that generated over 279.3 billion U.S. dollars of revenues in 2023. But as the company sees disappointing revenues of Google network websites for the first time, something is different in the realm of online search. With many users already preferring generative AI for searching online information first, many companies heard the call and saw 13 billion U.S. dollars invested in generative AI for broad usage, namely search engines and large language models (LLM), in 2023. In little more than a year, the AI-powered search trend proved itself strong enough to make a decade-long established internet market scrounge for answers on how to withstand and adapt to change.
