Google is North Korea's No. 1 search engine

[bill]

If you're doing SEO for the hermit kingdom this might be of interest

Report: Google is North Korea's No. 1 search engine [upi.com]
Google is North Korea's search engine of choice, among the few online databases available within the tightly-controlled regime, Radio Free Asia reported Monday.

The U.S. broadcaster cited web analytics firm StatCounter which showed Google recorded a 92.44 percent usage rate in North Korea from March last year to March this year.

Chinese search engine Baidu came second at 2 percent, while Bing and Russia's Yandex Ru were in the one percent range.

[keyplyr]

Google is North Korea's No. 1 search engine

And the No. 1 search entry is Dennis Rodman?

[bill]

Well, Google would know all of those keywords... Wonder if there's a Google Trends page or something else that would allow us to look at those.

[lucy24]

But those aren't the actual within-NorthKorea usage figures, are they? They're the numbers for the minute fraction of the population that has access to the “outside” internet, meaning government offices and perhaps a handful of 5-star hotels for visiting dignitaries.

:: detour to look up ::

57.73.224.0/19
77.94.35.0/24
175.45.176.0/22

That's a lot more than it used to be--a few years ago it was just the one /22--but still less than 10000 addresses for a population of 25 million. (Madagascar, with a similar population, has about 20 times as many.)

Hm. So North Korean government functionaries think Google gives the most bang for their buck. Is that a carefully considered choice, or simply the path of least resistance?

[bill]

I don't think there have ever been any accurate reports of Internet use in North Korea. It's doubtful that this is a sampling of the general population who likely can't see anything outside the country if they even do have access to the web. You're probably right that this is either top level people or visitors.

It's odd that they wouldn't be using South Korean search engines, but they may consider the results there more tainted than Google.