14 DAY TRIAL // It's no secret that Google dominates the search market. It's the top search engine in most countries it's available in, pretty much all of the world, with the exception of five countries. Not only is it the top search engine, it has a huge lead.
While it may be hovering at around 65 percent market share in the US, in Latin America for example, Google makes up 90 percent of the market.
According to a new report from comScore, Google is synonymous with web search in the countries the analytics company keeps track of in Latin America, meaning South America plus Mexico.
"Google Sites held a strong lead as the top search destination, accounting for 90 percent of all searches conducted in the region," the report reads.
"Latin Americans conducted a total of 18.5 billion searches, an increase of 21 percent from the previous year. This gain was driven primarily by a 14-percent increase in the number of unique searchers, as well as a 6-percent gain in the number of searches per searcher," it explained.
"Brazil, which accounted for the largest volume of search queries at nearly 6 billion, also had the strongest growth rate of 34 percent. Mexico ranked as the second largest search market with nearly 3.2 billion queries," comScore detailed.
Search traffic as a whole is on the rise in Latin America, but Google is holding a strong position. Granted, YouTube search traffic, which is significant, is bundled with Google Search, but that alone doesn't account for owning 90.5 percent of the search market in March 2011.
Coming in at second place is an interesting entry, Facebook actually sees more searches than either Microsoft or Yahoo. Granted, the social network only accounts for 2.8 percent of search volume in Latin America, followed by Microsoft also with 2.8 percent.