January’s UK search market share stats, provided by StatCounter Global Stats, have revealed Bing made gains for the third successive month, and now enjoys a 6.95 per cent share. Google saw the opposite trend, but its healthy dominance continues with an 88.22 per cent slice of the market.
Yahoo’s fortunes continue to fluctuate, and last month its share decreased from 3.91 per cent to 3.72 per cent.
Google’s grip on UK mobile search remains strong at 93.76 per cent, followed by Yahoo on 4.65 per cent and Bing on 1.38 per cent.
January search news
Google was very busy last month, starting with the shelving of their much-debated Google Glass project, just days after retail giant Tesco had unveiled its own app for the device.
Google also revealed changes to its translation app and sparked rumours of a new mobile algorithm by sending warnings to sites that it does not regard as mobile-friendly.
After Yahoo persuaded Mozilla to make it the default search engine on Firefox 34, Google hit back by sending reminders to users that they could still revert to Google if they chose.
Over at Bing, it made a change to PPC ad copy that means phone numbers will no longer be displayed in the same way.
January search trends
January’s UK search trends were dominated by two decidedly different events. The massacre at the offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo was the most searched for news story, with peaks on the day of the incident and a few days later as the attackers were killed after being cornered by police.
People also took to Google Image Search to have a look at the magazine’s cover the week after the tragedy, as the publication’s circulation skyrocketed to cope with demand.
Elsewhere, this year’s Celebrity Big Brother appears to have captured the attention of the viewing public, with half of January’s top 10 Google image searches related to contestants on the show. The programme also enjoyed several peaks throughout the month due to the high profile departures of some contestants, notably actors Jeremy Jackson and Ken Morley.
On YouTube, the most popular search was a controversial new video from pop star Sia, featuring Shia Labeouf.
The UK market share stats for January are listed below:
| UK Search Engine | January 2015 share (%) | December 2014 share (%) | Change |
| 88.22 | 88.38 | -0.16 | |
| Bing | 6.95 | 6.63 | 0.32 |
| Yahoo | 3.78 | 3.91 | -0.13 |
| Others | 1.05 | 1.08 | -0.03 |