Friday, February 29, 2008

BPN 1023 Search engines in the Netherlands

How do search engines fare in the Netherlands? Of course some of the Dutch use Google, Live Search Yahoo, and/or Altavista. And others search in engines from Dutch origin. The result bears hardly any surprises as Google is way ahead of foreign and Dutch search engines. In fact nine out of ten Dutch people google, when searching.

Checkit and the marketing survey bureau RMI Interactive monitor the use among 1475 internet users by web survey twice a year. The method is simple. User get a list of search engines and are asked whether they know the name of the search engine, have used occasionally or use it mostly.
Below are the stats of the five most popular search engines in The Netherlands. Between brackets is an indication of the rise and fall over against the results of the survey presented in September 2007. Google, Live Search and Yahoo are foreign search engines with a Dutch language interface and Dutch priority search. Ilse is the oldest Dutch search engine, owned by the Finnish publishing company Sanoma. Vinden.nl is a meta search engine, combining the results of more search engines.

Familiar with name
Google 99% (+1)
ilse 83% (-3)
Live Search 63% (+15)
Yahoo! 71% (=0)
Vinden.nl 49% (+14)

Used occasionally
Google 95% (=0)
ilse 9% (=0)
Live Search 7% (-1)
Yahoo! 4% (=0)
Vinden.nl 7% (+5)

Used mostly
Google 93% (-2)
ilse 1% (-1)
Live Search 0% (-1)
Yahoo! 0% (=0)
Vinden.nl 2% (+2)

From these stats and this graph it is clear that Google is well known and well used. Remarkable is the fact that MSN Live Search picks up 15 per cent, when it comes to name familiarity, hardly used. Vinden.nl picks up name familiarity and converts this in more search actions. The eldest search engine in the Netherlands ilse is slipping further into oblivion.


Blog Posting Number: 1023

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