Google Search Only Has 5 More Countries to Conquer

Like Facebook in the social networking space, Google is dominating search globally. Yet, there are several countries where it has failed to take over and where, usually local, outfits managed to hold on to their lead. But that number is dwindling, according to some sources, there are now only five countries around the world where Google doesn't lead in search.

The latest to fall is the Czech Republic where Google apparently passed Seznam.cz a local search engine which held on to the top spot and even dominated the market only a year ago.

Google was still about 20 percent behind Seznam.cz in market share at that time, according to Search Engine Land.

But the local site couldn't prove a match for Google's marketing muscle. While the company rarely advertises and even less so on TV, it aired a localized version of the Search Stories ads last summer, leading to a surge in users.

At the moment, Google is behind in only five more countries. Granted, most of them have deeply entrenched competitors are are generally unwelcoming to foreign players.

For example, Yandex is the number one search engine in Russia, despite years of work on Google's part and despite having an inferior product for a lot of time. Russia is proving a tough market for Facebook as well. Google is also behind in South Korea where the local Naver leads.

Google is, famously, the number two search engine in China where Baidu dominates. Google's decision to leave the mainland and move its servers as well as main search capabilities to Google.com.hk, to fight censorship, eroded Google's market share even further. For comparison, Facebook is completely blocked in the country.

Yahoo still has the top spot in a couple of Asian markets, Taiwan and Japan. It's the same story for Facebook in Japan, several local social networks are larger.

Interestingly enough though, Yahoo Japan will be powered by Google soon enough. Along with its own market share in the country, Google will then completely dominate in Japan, with over 90 percent of searches passing through its servers.