The UK search market share stats provided by StatCounter Global stats reveal that Bing has continued to slowly challenge Google’s dominance. There was a small swing between the two search engines occurring for the second successive month, with Bing gaining 0.13 per cent of the market, and Google losing 0.12 per cent.
However, Google still maintains a healthy lead over the competition with an overall market share of 88.38 per cent, with Bing on 6.63 per cent and Yahoo still struggling on 3.91 per cent.
Google’s dominance of UK mobile search continued unthreatened until the end of the year, with a 93.63 per cent share of the market dwarfing the efforts of Yahoo (4.69 per cent) and Bing (1.45 per cent).
December search news
Google tightened its grip on the mobile market even further in December, announcing a search speed increase of around 0.15 seconds that gives it an even greater edge over its already trailing challengers.
Yahoo attempted to improve its search fortunes by reaching an agreement with Mozilla to make Yahoo the default search engine for its Firefox 34 browser, a move that has already yielded benefits in the US.
Meanwhile, Facebook announced it would no longer be using Bing results on its site, and would instead start 2015 by focusing on its own search capabilities.
December search trends
The top search for December concerned arguably the year’s most controversial film, with Seth Rogen and James Franco’s The Interview attracting controversy wherever it went. Featuring a fictional plot to assassinate North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, it was scarcely out of the headlines as the decision to release it threatened to cause a diplomatic incident.
The film was also at the heart of a hack that affected distributor Sony Pictures, with North Korea denying responsibility for a huge data leak that included several embarrassing email exchanges between leading figures at the company. The scandal featured highly among December’s news searches.
As you would expect, many searches also took on a generally festive theme, with all of the top 10 image searches centred around Christmas or New Year celebrations.
Retail-based searches including Next and HMV suggests many were also keen to take advantage of any Boxing Day bargains available, while a spike in searches for ‘postcode finder’ and ‘met office’ indicates people spent plenty of time planning their Christmas break.
The UK market share stats for December, as provided by Search Engine Market Stats, are listed below:
| UK Search Engine | December 2014 share (%) | November 2014 share (%) | Change |
| 88.38 | 88.5 | -0.12 | |
| Bing | 6.63 | 6.5 | 0.13 |
| Yahoo | 3.91 | 3.85 | 0.06 |
| Others | 1.08 | 1.15 | -0.07 |