What It Means for Your Website

Something you might not know about – at least I didn’t – is that Google, the search behemoth we’ve all come to know (and sometimes love), is quietly losing its search market share in several European countries.

StatCounter says these are some of the lowest figures since they started tracking back in 2009.

What’s behind this slide?

Based on Search Engine Journal’s reporting, several factors seem to be contributing to Google losing its dominance:

All of EU’s regulations. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is forcing tech giants to play what the EU calls “fair.” For example, to comply, Android and Apple introduced choice screens already, meaning Google can’t be the default search engine anymore. Users can now pick their preferred search engine when setting up devices.

Of course, choosing a preferred search engine wasn’t much of a dilemma even two years ago – after all, who else would you pick? But today, one or two major new players are emerging as increasingly attractive options.

Let’s also not forget about the hefty €4.34 billion antitrust fine that the EU issued against Alphabet. Now more than ever, people are turning to more privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo.

🤔 Why you might care: A shift in default search engines means your site’s visibility could change depending on which search engines your users choose. If you’ve been optimizing mainly for Google, you might be missing out on traffic from other platforms that can have totally different measures of “quality pages worth ranking.” This is especially valid when users start favoring privacy-centric search engines more.

The U.S. Department of Justice is on Google’s case. You might have heard that the DoJ recommends the separation of Google from Chrome and Android. There’s also a separate lawsuit targeting Google’s advertising business. Meanwhile, Canada joined the pack, suing Google over anti-competitive practices in online ads, too, because why not, I guess.

🤔 Why you might care: Changes in Google’s structure and advertising platform – potentially separating that part of their business – could impact your site’s ad setup, revenue and costs. Overall, investing more in diversifying your traffic sources and trying to build your reputation with other gatekeepers (aka. paid traffic sources) becomes more crucial now than ever.

ChatGPT is now offering a search feature, which is getting quite good reviews online. Other competitors are not far behind either. What’s interesting about this new influx, for me at lest, is that they offer a completely alternative method of searching for and showing you information. It’s no longer, “let’s find a page online that has the info,” but rather, “let’s create a custom page and show that.”

The decline is not happening everywhere

Interestingly, some EU countries like Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Ireland haven’t seen the same dip in Google’s market share. The reason? Maybe it’s device preference?

Google’s losses are more visible on desktop (-10% over five years in the EU) than on mobile (-2.1%), as reported by SEJ. And thanks to a $20 billion deal keeping Google as the default on Apple devices, its mobile position remains stronger – at least for now.

🤔 Why you might care: Knowing where Google remains strong helps you tailor your SEO and marketing strategies regionally. If your audience is in countries where Google still dominates without hiccups, your current strategies might remain effective. But in regions where Google’s share is slipping, perhaps it’s time to adjust.

What the future holds

We could spend all day talking about Google’s so-called demise and then carry on as usual – without anything actually changing. Instead, let’s focus on the actions we can take.

It’s reported that Ecosia and Qwant (alternative search engines) are collaborating on a joint web index to reduce reliance on Google and Bing. Others might also decide to follow suit (although that’s just my opinion), which could mean a change to the search landscape overall.

👉 New indexes mean new crawling and indexing behaviors. Ensuring your site is accessible and follows best practices across different platforms will be key. It’s no longer, “make your site compatible with Google’s accessibility guidelines,” but more like, “make your site compatible with accessibility guidelines.”

Remember browser wars? Yes, browsers play a crucial role here. Since the DoJ is pushing for Chrome to separate from Google, other non-Chrome browsers are gaining popularity, plus even OpenAI is being rumored to work on their own browser, the control of user interfaces is becoming the new battleground.

👉 In other words, the browser your audience uses can affect how they find and interact with your site. Browser-specific features, tools or integrations could impact user experience and site accessibility.

“What can I do today?”

Don’t put all your eggs in Google’s basket. Start optimizing for Bing, DuckDuckGo, ChatGPT, and other emerging search engines.

Keep up with international laws like GDPR that could affect how your site is indexed or displayed in search results. Focus on this particularly in the places where your customers and readers are located.

Utilize the webmaster tools offered by different search engines to understand how your site performs on each platform. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are the bare minimum.

Adopt stronger privacy practices. This can make your site more appealing to users of privacy-focused search engines and browsers. For instance, you don’t want your Brave browser users to see a notice saying that the browser has blocked 20 different scripts running on your site.

And okay, sure, Google isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but cracks are starting to show in its European stronghold. That’s reason enough to take a closer look at our own backyard – our websites – and focus on making improvements.

Keep your strategies agile, your search engines diversified, and your websites optimized!

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