According to new research conducted by Efficient Frontier, the United Kingdom’s search engine marketing industry posted year-over-year growth of 21 percent in Q1 2010. The tremendous year-over-year growth was expected, as Q1 2009 was a particularly weak quarter for the industry.
That being said, there are still a lot of reasons for search engine advertisers to be enthusiastic for 2010. Across all search engines, impression volumes are up, indicating greater consumer interest. As economic conditions stabilize in the coming year, that may also encourage more ad spend from marketers. Efficient Frontiers predicts that search engine marketing will grow 10 to 15 percent in 2010.
Though Google’s click and spend shares grew from 86 percent to 87.2 percent year-over-year, Bing saw the biggest quarterly growth, up 9 percent from Q4 2009. Yahoo fell in both click and spend share.
Bing’s growth in the click and spend shares mirrors the search engine’s growth in the United States. According to a report issued by Efficient Frontier last week, Bing now accounts for more than 5.5 percent of the click and spend shares. Though Google is still the overwhelming favorite, Bing’s increasing popularity may have ramifications on the search engine optimization (SEO) landscape in the future.
