One of the things I keep a check on as a journalist who predominantly works online is the search engine market share. Both worldwide, and for specific countries.
Including the country I currently live in — Austria.
One of my reasons is, due to Google search engine results (SERPs) now being a shitshow as they prioritize both legacy media and garbage AI-generated websites over independent websites with accurate information, I am one of millions of people now wishing for Google’s demise.
After all, when I write an article and then someone steals it, rewrites it by shoving it through an AI-content spinner, and then publishes it as their own, and Google outranks that junk over mine, yep, it more than pisses me off.
Another reason is I am just anal, and love to look at data.
On that note then, what is the search engine market share in Austria for desktop, tablet and mobile in 2024, or at least when it comes to the latest data available (for February, 2024), and which search engine/s seems to be making inroads into the massive monopoly that is Google?
Search engine market share in Austria for desktop in 2024
Just like every other country, the search engine market share in Austria changes depending on if you look at data for desktop, tablet or mobile.
So let’s start with desktop.
According to Stat Counter, Google actually has a lower share of the search engine market in Austria on desktop than it does worldwide.
The search engine market share broken down by search engine for desktop then looks like this:
Google — 80.65 percent (worldwide — 82.3 percent)
Bing — 13.57 percent (10.17 percent)
Yahoo — 2.36 percent (2.6 percent)
Duck Duck Go — 1.73 percent (2.53 percent)
Ecosia — 0.67 percent (0.7 percent)
Yandex — 0.67 percent (0.47 percent)
I have also included the worldwide figures next to each search engine in parentheses, so you can see how Austria compares versus worldwide desktop shares.
As you will see, people living/visiting Austria use Google almost 2 percentage points less than the average user worldwide, while using Bing is quite a bit more popular in Austria than it is worldwide, as that search engine continues to make inroads into Google’s monopoly in Europe.
Search engine market share in Austria for tablet in 2024
As for the tablet search engine market share in Austria for February, 2024 via Stat Counter, it looks like this:
Google — 92.95 percent (worldwide — 90.83 percent)
Bing — 4.77 percent (4.96 percent)
Yahoo — 0.26 percent (0.91 percent)
Duck Duck Go — 0.91 percent (0.71 percent)
Ecosia — 0.28 percent (doesn’t register much worldwide, with Baidu — 0.44 percent taking the place of Ecosia)
Yandex — 0.62 percent (1.76 percent)
On tablet, Google has the lion’s share of the search engine market in Austria, as well as worldwide, with other search engines sadly not getting much of a look in.
Interestingly, though, Duck Duck Go is used slightly more in Austria than worldwide.
Then again, Austrians value their privacy just about more than any other nationality I have ever met, so there’s that.
Search engine market share in Austria for mobile in 2024
The February data for the search engine market share in Austria on mobile is even more depressing when it comes to Google’s monopoly:
Google — 96.82 percent (worldwide — 95.37 percent)
Bing — 0.58 percent (0.51 percent)
Yahoo — 0.31 percent (0.48 percent)
Duck Duck Go — 0.62 percent (0.46 percent)
Ecosia — 0.47 percent (Baidu in this instance — 0.89 percent)
Yandex — 0.98 percent (1.57 percent)
In fact, folks in Austria seem to rarely think about anything else when it comes to what search engine they use on their mobile, and use Google even more than everyone else.
Then again, that probably has something to do with Google technically breaking the law when it comes to paying for their search engine to be the dominant one on most mobile devices.
Something that is currently being looked at as the world’s biggest search engine is now involved in a federal anti-trust case brought against them by the Department of Justice in the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century, as it has been alleged Google pays more than $10 billion a year for that “privilege”.
In other words, if you are still using Google — you might want to stop.
And there’s the data for the search engine market share in Austria in 2024 using February data.
It will be interesting to see how that changes in coming months, if it actually does, won’t it?
Graphics: Generated via Microsoft Copilot