Will Other Search Engines Ever Compete with Google?

For many of us the first thing we see on logging onto the internet is the bright vibrant logo of the Google homepage. Google is the most popular search engine in the world and makes up an inordinate percentage of the total market.



In fact in the American search engine market Google makes up approximately two thirds of the total searches performed. Results published documenting the searches conducted in December by the Nielsen Company found that 67.3% of all U.S. searches were performed on Google. Google's two closest competitors Yahoo and Microsoft's Bing made up only 14.4% and 9.9% of the market respectively. With such a void in competition, is there any way for Google's distant rivals to close the gap significantly?



The thing about Google is that they have very nearly created a monopoly in the search engine market. Due to the simplicity of their design and usage they were able to attract a great deal of the webs users in the early 2000's. Furthermore they have kept these users by providing a complex back end for generating detailed and comprehensive search results. As a result their grip on the market has continued to tighten over recent years. Being in this position of power makes them the priority engine for web based marketing and optimisation. PPC campaigns and other advertising is predominately geared toward and applied on Google. It makes sense, as if you want to get your adverts noticed then put them on the most popular engine. This success has given Google the impetus to go on and develop a great deal more applications to further their coverage and popularity. Only recently they released their own browser and operating system.



In spite of this the other search engines Bing and Yahoo still provide comprehensive and useful alternatives to Google. In order to boost their popularity they have to provide services that are better or different from Google. Bing is making significant moves toward doing this and has recently introduced enhanced medical and automobile search facilities. Yahoo on the other hand seems to be losing ground month on month. While website design is vital to an ecommerce site success, SEO companies are well aware of the importance of optimising for search engines, and there are none more influential to the web than Google.



It looks unlikely that there will be any challenger to Google's title in the near future. However, it remains to be seen whether Yahoo will be overtaken as the second most popular as Bing makes their break.