International and Search Engine Rank Tracking

Business owners often fight for every bit of Google traffic they can get. The problem is with so many businesses going online, Google is becoming more competitive with each passing day.

Did you know…

There are two traffic sources that are all too often overlooked.

• Traffic from search engines other than Google
• Global traffic

What’s more, these traffic sources tend to be less competitive than the US Google traffic.

The question is, should you take advantage of these traffic sources?

In this post, I’ll be looking at the global search engine market share to show you how much you could potentially expand your business. I’ll then show you how to track these sources so that you can keep control of your traffic and sales.

Before jumping into the article, I must point out that I have not looked at the data per industry. My intention in this post is to look at the question in a general way applying broad strokes.

Since each niche is different, to decide if your business should be investing in other traffic sources, you’ll have to do your own more granular research.

With that, let’s look at search engines…

Search Engine Market Share

We often don’t take into account that Google isn’t the only kid on the block. There are many other search engines. But before you spend any of your precious time investing in other search engines, you must first know if there is any value in it.

To do that we’ll be looking at some data. By doing this you’ll quickly be able to see if you are leaving potential money on the table and if you should research these traffic sources further. Who knows, you might find some low hanging fruit that you can easily go after.

With that said, here is a little data…

Desktop Search Engine Market Share

According to Net Marketshare, looking at the data from December 2019 to the end of November 2020 on desktop, Google dominates the search engine market share by accounting for a whopping 69.61%.

Now 69.61% is a large number, but, looking at this from a different perspective that leaves 30.39% unaccounted for.

If we take a look at who is competing for 30.39% of the global market share, we have two main players, Bing and Baidu. Bing accounts for 13.4% of global search engine usage, while Baidu comes in a close second by accounting for 12.69% of the market share.

These two big players account for 26.09% of the entire global market share.

Let that sink in.

26.09% is substantial.

Now before jumping to any conclusions, let’s first take a look at the search engine market share for mobile…

Mobile Search Engine Market Share

Here we see a dramatically different picture. On mobile, Google accounts for literally 93.86% of the global market share.

Baidu comes in at a feeble second place only accounting for 3.64% of market share.

Great, so now we know something about search engine market share.

The big question is…

What does this mean to your business?

Search Engine Market Share – The Big Picture

I’d say that the message is clear. If a large percentage of your business is on desktop, depending on your niche, you might be missing big opportunities if you’re not tracking Bing and Baidu.

Think about it this way, all things being equal, by just getting your site to the top of Bing and Baidu you could potentially expand your desktop market share by 26.09%.

What’s more, ranking in these search engines might be as simple as submitting your URLs for indexing.

This brings us back to the initial point. If you see a percentage of your market share on another search engine, you must have a rank tracker that tracks those search engines.

Search Engine Tracking

For instance, if you look at our rank tracker in the Search Engines report, you will see ranking data for all the search engines you are tracking.

Also in the Rank Tracker Dashboard, you can see daily, weekly and monthly data for all search engines that you are tracking.

What’s more, you can also see how competitive SERP Features are in different search engines by using the SERP Feature Monitor.

Now let’s explore different countries.

Search Engine Market Share – Per Country

If we look at all of the Google traffic and segment it by country, we see something interesting. According to Similarweb, US traffic accounts for only 26.76% of all Google traffic. (Unfortunately, I was not able to find separate data for desktop and mobile.)

US Google traffic accounts for 26.76% of all Google traffic

This means 73.24% of all Google traffic comes from non-US countries.

The bottom line here is if you are selling products that make sense to sell in different countries, do your research. It may be worth your while to expand to countries other than the US.

Now, I do understand that expanding into different countries has its complexities, but where it makes sense to do it you’ll need to set up rank tracking that gives you granular country-specific data.

International Tracking

For instance, if you look at our Google Analytics Geo Location report, you’ll see which locations are bringing traffic to your business.

Now to see what organic traffic is coming from these locations, you’ll have to set up a filter that only shows organic traffic.

Now this report will show you how much traffic your site is getting in whichever country it’s ranking for. This can help you to choose new potential markets.

Having this data is useful, but before you set up any campaigns, you must qualify this traffic.

You can do this by seeing what keywords your site is ranking for in those countries with our Google Search Console reports.

Google Search Console Keywords Report

If you go to the Google Search Console Keywords report you’ll see a list of queries your site is ranking for. In order to see the data according to country, you’ll need to create a filter in the same way as the GEO location report above.

This report will tell you if your site is showing up for your target queries, which will give you a rough idea of how your audience interacts with your site in these target countries.

Once you are tracking keywords in a specific country, you can use the Google Search Console Gain & Loss report to track how your site is performing over time. The report will show you what new queries your site is showing up for and which queries it’s no longer showing up for.

This report will show you if your SEO efforts are paying off by seeing if your site is ranking for new targeted search terms.

The Bottom Line – Track Your Secondary Traffic Sources

As we have seen from the data, there may be some big business opportunities by going after secondary traffic sources.

Now I admit I have only presented very general data here. Hopefully, this post will inspire you to do your own research. Perhaps there are some hidden opportunities that could help expand your business market share with very little effort.

Once you find a market you want to go after, you will need a rank tracker that is versatile enough to track different search engines and different countries. You can then use that data to qualify if those markets are a good fit for your business.

by Darrell Mordecai

Darrell creates SEO content for Similarweb, drawing on his deep understanding of SEO and Google patents.