Mediarun Search Marketing News

Google the SEO king, though Bing could soon make its presence felt

January 20th 2010

Search Engine Optimisation News

When it comes to search engine marketing, Google is currently streets ahead of its rivals, at least in Europe.

With businesses increasingly aware of the potential benefits of being placed ahead of their competitors in the online search engine rankings, newly-released figures show that overall spend on search engine optimisation (SEO) tactics was up again in 2009.

According to the report into the health of the internet marketing industry by Efficient Markets, the retail sector alone increased its spend on online efforts by 17 per cent over the final quarter of 2009.

Notably, a significant proportion of the millions of pounds invested in search engine optimisation marketing over the lucrative three-month period was geared towards boosting performance levels in the Google rankings.

Indeed, the report also reveals that the California search engine giant pulled in just under 75 per cent of all online marketing outlay over the final quarter of the decade, up from 73.9 per cent in the preceding three-month period.

In comparison, rival Yahoo! managed to attract just 20.4 per cent of all search marketing spend, while Microsoft's newly-released Bing accounted for just 5.1 per cent of the UK market.

Commenting on the overall state of the online marketing sector, Efficient Frontier president and chief executive David Karnstedt said: "The fourth quarter results and the 2010 outlook paint a much rosier picture than we've seen in more than a year.

"While certain sectors, such as travel, continue to lag, we expect overall growth to exceed 15 per cent for the full year 2010."

However, rather than simply taking Google's dominance for granted and becoming complacent with their search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts, businesses would be wise to stay on top of developments in the increasingly competitive search engine world.

According to a newly-published exclusive from Business Week, Apple is in negotiations with Microsoft over the possibility of making Bing, rather than Google, the default search engine on its massively-popular iPhone.

Should a deal materialise, it could lead to a massive shake-up of the search engine marketing sector as the big technology companies look to win over internet browsers on the move, as well as those sat at their desks.