April 29 2008
Google accounts for more than a third of UK traffic
Over one third of all UK Internet traffic comes from Google websites, and it’s going to get substantially bigger predicts Hitwise
Online intelligence service Hitwise reveals that the top 100 Google Internet properties sent over one third of all Internet traffic to websites in the UK during March 2008. A custom category consisting of the 100 most visited web properties in the UK that are owned by Google Inc. accounted for 36.55% of upstream traffic to all categories of websites in the UK during March 2008, up from 30.19% in March 2007.
The most visited Google property in the UK is www.google.co.uk and, with a market share of 7.77% of all UK Internet visits in March, it was also the most visited website in the UK last month. www.google.co.uk was also the website that sent most traffic to other websites during March, accounting for 27.48% of upstream traffic to all categories. This was followed by www.google.com , which had a market share of 1.70% and accounted for 4.43% of all upstream traffic in March.
Over the last six months the traffic has increased by 1% each month and with the news that Google is changing its trademark protection rules so that non-trademark owners will be able to bid on trademarked terms within Google's Adwords system in the UK it should increase still further – For more info see our editorial http://www.internetretailing.net/news/editorial-2013-let2019s-play-google-keyword-roulette/?searchterm=google%20trademark
"Given Google's large market share this change will have a real impact on the search marketing industry in the UK," commented Robin Goad, Director of Research for Hitwise UK. "Our research shows that 91.8% of people searching for a brand in the UK end up on the brand owners' websites, whereas in the USA - where Google has never protected trademarked terms - the figure is just 84.2%. The main reason for this gap is that a company in the USA can bid on a competitor's brand term, and of course many do. We predict that when the changes come into effect, brand owners will have to compete more aggressively to protect their brands online in the UK".
