A bit of an unusual article to post for two main reasons.
- Google dominates the search market in most of the world, anything other than complete domination is unheard of. That makes it unusual from the off.
- The Chinese market is not typical or representative for most of us, in fact it is one of the few remaining extreme opposites for most of us.
However, Google has lost market share in China which will have SEO’ers globally twitching or possibly speculating… then again possibly not as China is most definitely not representative for most of us.
Google.cn held on to 12.7% of the Chinese search market, a huge market of 300mn internet users, dropping a significant 3.9% market share in August. Bing held on to 6% of the market while local leader Baidu snatched up 77.2%.
What this news presents to the SEO community is a complete departure for most… Google is not the leader and the gap between 2nd and 3rd positions is smaller, most significantly Google and Bing are closing the gap.
If nothing else these stats make you think what if…? Different search engine usage and acceptance would make us all re-think, that’s why we keep our eyes on the radar, tracking for any possible changes. Stay proactive not reactive.
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