Google’s UK statistics
Google is a popular search engine in most places in the world, except countries in which a government censors internet usage or where there is poor internet penetration, but in the United Kingdom Google is by far the most dominate search engine because:
- it has 82.9 per cent market share
- it is the most popular search engine in the UK
- Alexa (2013) states that it is the best website online
- Google is more popular than Microsoft, eBay, BBC, Amazon and Wikipedia
These statistics alone show that Google is popular but why is Google a popular search engine?
Why is Google popular and successful?
Google’s business model helps explain its popularity and success because: of their growth in market value and revenue; they have increased the number of people clicking in search news; they are a piece of picture locating software and have increased the number of staff, for example, lawyers and lobbyists. So Google’s business model allows the company to run successfully which plays a large role in promoting and maintaining Google Search.
Working at Google allows employees to take advantage of a range of benefits, such as, getting access to medical staff, funding for classes/degrees which help you learn a subject and receiving travel insurance for both personal and professional travel arrangements. Most of Google’s success of maintaining and running their offices plays a large part of Google Searches’ success.
Correlation, marketing and choice
Google’s interface is simple and easy to use. It is highly unlikely that a searcher will not know how to search and examine Google results. To explore more of the important viewpoints you might want to read my slightly older post Is Bing better than Google? because this post looks at the different perspectives which explain why Google and Bing are popular search engines.
Will Google always be popular?
This is a very difficult question but most ‘Googlers’ like Google because they return to the same search engine even though there are over 40 free other search engines available. The user behaviour of Googlers, returning to Google’s search engine rather than using a rival, indicate that Google’s success will not change anytime soon because people’s opinions and habits are difficult to break away from. So it is possible to conclude that Google will remain popular for the next few years.
A case study of Instagram and Vine
Other digital enterprises, Instagram and Vine, have recently shown that users can change their use of a digital product very quickly. Knibbs’ (2013) work looked at the number of Instagram and Vine links on Twitter’s micro-blogging site to find that Vine links have overtook those of Instagram. We can see from this example that the ‘digital world’ does change very quickly. This can be applied to Google’s search engine because a smaller search engine can overtake Google anytime. So the question here is not will Google always remain popular? It should be: what is the best search engine for results and which search engine offers the best user experience?
Photo of Bing, Yahoo and Google logo. Source
What makes Google popular?
So the short answer is their simple interface, ease of use, effective marketing, business model and staff fostering. But it is important to note that “ex-Google employees” have recently been vocal about wider issues, for example corporation tax avoidance, which shows that wider issues can also affect Google’s success or lack of.
Posted by Gerald Murphy
References
- Alexa. (2013) Google.com. [Online] [Accessed on 25th March 2013] http://is.gd/kC7Nom
- comScore Ranks Top Web Sites in U.K. for September. [Online] http://is.gd/jYXkPs
- Google. Benefits. [Online] http://is.gd/pHmjGl
- Knibb, K. (2013) Here’s why you shouldn’t be surprised that people share more Vines than Instagrams on Twitter. http://is.gd/svAMju
- NetMarketShare. (2013) Desktop Search Engine Market Share. [Online] [Accessed on 10th April 2013] http://is.gd/W9dC8V
- Office of National Statistics (2012) Internet and web based content. [Online] [Accessed on 16th Feb 2013] http://is.gd/uGPjU8
- The Economist. (2007) Who’s afraid of Google? 384(8544) Sept edition. pp. 9 and 52 — 54
Gerald Murphy 
