The most popular SEs within each country?

Any statistics or resources?

[tabby]

Hi,

The European Search Engines forum here is enlightening, but there do seem to be many gaps in the information available. Does anyone have details of reliable resources regarding the most popular search engines used by each country of the world? I work for a search enign marketing company and it is essential that we know which foreign search engines are going to be most beneficial for our clients.

Either one source of info or individual leads about specific countries would be much appreciated.

Many thanks.

[Ove]

For us in Sweden there is Fast my experience is in Sweden there is evreka, google, msn, lycos. Evreka is the king to bring traffic to those sites i have. Evreka is also the biggest SE in Sweden.

Lets here what Rumbas and Heine have to say about taking country by country to tell wich one who is the best choice for regional traffic.

/Ove

[heini]

Exact numbers for search engines are hard to find. Why?
The stats you get from places like JupiterMMXI or Nielsen Netratings - with the two just being merged - measure visits and reach of sites and properties. They do not count searches performed.
There are stats like that out there, but usually you will have to pay big money for such figures.

Next problem is the constant flux of things - whats a stat worth that is based on numbers 3 or 6 or even more months old? Mind you - they would lead you to believe infoseek were a big player in Germany, or AV a top player across Europe.

So I'd suggest taking it one country after the other - looking for stats like Nielsen's for a general idea, than reading and asking in places like WmW.

Asking for help in this place usually will bring in some experienced local folks willing to help and share.

[Rumbas]

You have seen this thread [webmasterworld.com], right?

That said, I think heini's comments are head in the nail. Things change so very fast in Europe. One day the most popular engines serve Fast results, the next they might serve Google and finally one day they might their do their own crawling.
Well, it's often the other way around. They use their own db and once they realize what a moster job it is to keep a db fresh, they switch to either Fast or Google.
Lately web.de in Germany pulled the switch from Fast to Google.

Imagine maintaining a European SE's db where you have litterally hundreds of directories and search engines. I try to keep one, but it is almost impossible and it will always be out-of-date on some points.

Tabby, I would suggest reading the country threads found here [webmasterworld.com], and then post your questions there. This way you may flush out the locals who has fresh inputs for each country :)