International Search Engine Landscape
For most of the world, Google Search is the search engine. So much so that it has become a verb in conversation – to ‘Google’ something. Even if you use another option, you still likely think of Google Search first.
However, there are many countries where Google has fierce competition and is even sometimes surpassed. In China, Baidu Search is the standard, with Bing holding a fairly significant market share as well. In Russia, Yandex dominates the search market. Popular in South Korea is Naver.
There are also some countries where non-Google search engines have a significant hold, but not quite as substantial. Yandex is popular in Russia’s neighbouring countries: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkey. Yahoo! and Bing are both rather popular in Japan. Seznam remains rather popular in the Czech Republic, and Cốc Cốc does reasonably in Vietnam.
A common reason for these engines being popular is their handling of local languages using non-Latin scripts. Censorship and compliance with government regulations also influence their success.
These search engines are worth keeping front of mind if you’re targeting an aforementioned country or localising for them.