They say if you want to hide a dead body, ditch it in the 2nd page of Google search results. Even the word "Google" is used as a verb: To search online. When Google was on the rise, people used to post numbers all the time showing competition among search engines. It's been a while, and Roy Morgan has some new numbers to show just how dominant Google has become in Australia.
In a four week period, almost 17 million Australians over the age of 14 used Google. That's 86%. Almost two million visited Yahoo, and a similar number visited Bing. Part of me wonders how much of that last figure is Microsoft's aggressive Windows 10 upgrade push alongside Cortana and Bing.
If you grab a microscope, you can make out the orange sections of the below bar graph, which represent those who use Yahoo or Bing and don't touch Google.
According to Roy Morgan, your average Yahoo searcher spends just over seven minutes, whereas your average Binger spends 24 minutes. For Google, that figure is closer to 2.5 hours.
I had a family member over Easter tell me he occasionally swapped over to Yahoo to find what he was after. In the same week, a friend Binged right in front of me. My response to both was the same: "Wow, really? Let me know how that goes."
There's growing interest in other search engines from a privacy perspective, with more and more folks becoming aware of privacy as an important issue and trying out engines like DuckDuckGo. But convenience, man. It's hard to stay away from that convenience.
All up, in 2015, Aussies spent 552 million hours on Google.
Image via Shutterstock
Comments
I use duckduckgo as my primary search engine and google only as a last resort. I used google a lot in the 2000s.
Why does Yahoo even bother?
If I had to guess, I'd say because it's a business aimed towards making money.
I've been using other search engines, as Google has lately been focusing a lot more on what seem to be revenue generating results.
I don't understand how convenience comes into it in Google's favour? As someone whose main email has been a Hotmail account since 1999, Bing is a lot more convenient for me than Google.
I've been using Bing since about 2009, when my nephew put me onto it. Back then it was probably about 80% as good as Google but for at least the last four years it has been every bit as good overall, and actually better with image searches. Sometimes, when I can't get what I'm looking for from Bing, I'll try Google but it's been ages, maybe five or six years, since Google could do any better.
The main reason I stuck with Bing, and the reason I have deactivated Cortana on my phone, is Bing's Image of the Day. It is just a beautiful thing to see every day when you first open your browser. (When you activate Cortana, it deactivates the Bing based search, so you lose the Image of the Day.)
I would have to say that the search relevance of Bing is utter trash. I have tried to solo Bing many many times only to be pissed off with the lack of relevant results. I then fell back to Google which gave me exactly what I was after..
That being said, images are particularly good. I too use Bing's image of the day. Very nice feature.
Last edited April 11, 2016 4:45 pmI now use DuckDuckGo in all my devices. However, just yesterday I searched for a 'supplement store near me' & I live in Perth WA. DuckDuckGo returned results for Washington USA and Google for a booth in my local shopping mall/centre. FYI: I have never tried Bing or Yahoo search engines.
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