As of March 2025, Google represented 79.1 percent of the global online search engine market on desktop devices. Despite being much ahead of its competitors, this represents the lowest share ever recorded by the search engine in these devices for over two decades. Meanwhile, its long-time competitor Bing accounted for 12.21 percent, as tools like Yahoo and Yandex held shares of over 2.9 percent each. Google and the global search market Ever since the introduction of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the search engine market, while the shares of all other tools has been rather lopsided. The majority of Google revenues are generated through advertising. Its parent corporation, Alphabet, was one of the biggest internet companies worldwide as of 2024, with a market capitalization of 2.02 trillion U.S. dollars. The company has also expanded its services to mail, productivity tools, enterprise products, mobile devices, and other ventures. As a result, Google earned one of the highest tech company revenues in 2024 with roughly 348.16 billion U.S. dollars. Search engine usage in different countries Google is the most frequently used search engine worldwide. But in some countries, its alternatives are leading or competing with it to some extent. As of the last quarter of 2023, more than 63 percent of internet users in Russia used Yandex, whereas Google users represented little over 33 percent. Meanwhile, Baidu was the most used search engine in China, despite a strong decrease in the percentage of internet users in the country accessing it. In other countries, like Japan and Mexico, people tend to use Yahoo along with Google. By the end of 2024, nearly half of the respondents in Japan said that they had used Yahoo in the past four weeks. In the same year, over 21 percent of users in Mexico said they used Yahoo.

As of March 2025, Google continued to dominate the global search engine industry by far, with an 89.62 percent market share. However, this stronghold may be showing signs of erosion, with its share across all devices dipping to its lowest point in over two decades. Bing, Google's closest competitor, currently holds a market share of 4.01 percent across, while Russia-based Yandex hikes to the third place with a share of around 2.51 percent. Competitive landscape and regional variations While Google's overall dominance persists, other search engines carve out niches in various markets and platforms. Bing holds a 12.21 percent market share across desktop devices worldwide, as Yandex and Baidu have found success inside and outside of their home markets. Yandex is used by over 63 percent of Russian internet users, but Baidu has seen its market share significantly in China As regional variations highlight the importance of local players in challenging Google's global supremacy, the company is likely to face more challenges with the AI-powered online search trend and increasing regulatory scrutiny. Search behavior and antitrust concerns Despite facing more competition, Google remains deeply ingrained in users' online habits. In 2024, "Google" itself was the most popular search query on its own platform, followed by "YouTube" - another Google-owned property. This self-reinforcing ecosystem has drawn scrutiny from regulators, with the European Commission imposing millionaire antitrust fines on the company. As its influence extends beyond search into various online services, the company's market position continues to be a subject of debate among industry watchdogs and authorities worldwide.

In January 2025, Google accounted for 93.89 percent of the global mobile search engine market worldwide. Ever since the release of Google Search in 1997, the company's search engine has dominated the search engine market, maintaining a margin of more than 93 percentage points since January 2015. Currently owned by the parent corporation Alphabet Inc., Google has one of the highest tech company revenues, with roughly 305.63 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

As of June 2024, global Google searches for the word "ChatGPT" increased again after a slight decline by the end of 2024. Interest in the chatbot, developed by the U.S.-based OpenAI and launched in November 2022, started rising in the week ending December 3, 2022. Recently, growing demand for information on ChatGPT made the keyword hit a peak of 100 index points during the week ending on June 2, 2024. ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, is a chatbot and AI-powered auto-generative text system able to give human-sounding replies and reproduce human-like interactions when prompted.

In 2024, "Google" was the most popular search query on Google. "You" ranked second, scoring an index value of 79 points. "YouTube" ranked third with an index value of 76 points relative to the top query, while "Facebook" ranked fifth, with an index value of 62.

As of September 2020, translation-related topics accounted for ** percent of Google searches worldwide. Social networks generated ****** percent of global Google Search queries during the year to date.

Google is not only popular in its home country, but is also the dominant internet search provider in many major online markets, frequently generating between ** and ** percent of desktop search traffic. The search engine giant has a market share of over ** percent in India and accounted for the majority of the global search engine market, way ahead of other competitors such as Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, and Baidu. Google’s online dominance All roads lead to Rome, or if you are browsing the internet, all roads lead to Google. It is hard to imagine an online experience without the online behemoth, as the company offers a wide range of online products and services that all seamlessly integrate with each other. Google search and advertising are the core products of the company, accounting for the vast majority of the company revenues. When adding this up with the Chrome browser, Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, Google’s ownership of the Android mobile operating system, and various other consumer and enterprise services, Google is basically a one-stop shop for online needs. Google anti-trust rulings However, Google’s dominance of the search market is not always welcome and is keenly watched by authorities and industry watchdogs – since 2017, the EU commission has fined Google over ***** billion euros in antitrust fines for abusing its monopoly in online advertising. In March 2019, European Commission found that Google violated antitrust regulations by imposing contractual restrictions on third-party websites in order to make them less competitive and fined the company *** billion euros.

In January 2020, Google accounted for 87.17 percent of single-word search queries worldwide. Yahoo generated 3.73 percent of single-word search during the same period. When looking at search queries with two words and more, Google absolutely dominated the market with over 94 percent market share in every query length.

In 2020, nearly two-thirds of Google searches were zero-click searches. Out of the remaining 35 percent, 33.59 percent resulted in clicks on organic search results and 1.59 percent in paid search results.

"*******" was the most frequently searched keyword on Google worldwide, with over ***** million monthly online searches during the analyzed period of January to March in 2025. Furthermore, the search resulted in more than ***** million website visits, or more than **** percent of all traffic. With *** million monthly searches, "***" was the second most popular keyword, and "***********" came in third place with about ****** million searches per month.

"Squid Game" was the keyword that had the highest maximum monthly search volume in 2021, with 101 million online searches worldwide in its peak month. The second most trending keyword based on its peak search volume was "Christian Eriksen." Eriksen is a Danish football player who experienced cardiac arrest during the Euro 2020 Denmark against Finland match, on June 12, 2021. Another popular keyword search on Google was Queen Elisabeth's late husband "Prince Phillip," with a peak of 37.2 million searches. Another popular topic related to the British royal family was Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021. This was the first big interview after the couple decided to step back as senior royals, and queries on the topic went up to 1.2 million searches on Google in 2021.

In 2020, many brand new trends were searched online for the first time. The most popular new search term worldwide typed to the Google search bar for the first time ever in 2020 was "my2020census gov". During the measured period, the search query generated a maximum monthly search volume of 13.6 million searches.

In 2022, Wordle was the most popular Google search in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Spain. By contrast, in Germany and Italy, Ukraine was the most popular search on Google. In Brazil, Google users were interested the most in the 2022 elections.

Wordle!

Launched in October 2021 and purchased by the New York Times in January 2022, Wordle is an online game where players can play only once a day and have to guess a five-letter word in six tries. The game became an instant hit, with a surge of daily users at the beginning of the year. For instance, it was one of the most popular iPhone apps in the United States, being played mostly by millennials. Also in the United Kingdom, the game gained in popularity, with most players using the app every day.

Google search

As the leading search engine in many countries, Google is the most visited multi-platform web property. Indeed, most of Google's revenues come from Google properties, which include the search platform, the traffic generated by search distribution partners using Google.com as their default search in browsers, and the advertising on its own sites.

As of June 2024, global searches for the keyword "generative AI" had experienced an increase in the previous year. The search terms for generative artificial intelligence surged in popularity from mid-February to early March 2024, hitting a score of 100 index points in the week ending March 3. Interest in "generative AI" frequently coincides with searches for ChatGPT, an AI chatbot model developed by the United States-based research company OpenAI.

Since November 2022, global interest in "OpenAI," the United-States-based developer of the popular chatbot ChatGPT on Google searches has increased significantly. Shortly after introducing ChatGPT in November 2022, OpenAI search queries on Google saw a spike in popularity. The search for the company's keyword surged around April 2023, just a month before ChatGPT was released as an app for iOS devices, but peaked at 100 for the week ending November 19, 2023.

Google searches interested in the AI-powered text-to-image "Midjourney" spiked in the first 3 weeks of June 2025. On June 15, the keyword hit a popularity score of 100 index points, before starting to decrease to 75 index points to its latest measured week. Midjourney was first launched on Discord with a dedicated server where users can produce and share the images created with the help of the integrated Discord bot. As of April 2025, Midjourney was the most popular server on the platform, with approximately 20 million Discord user members.

As of May 2025, global Google searches for the word "Grindr" have generated a slight global increase over the previous five months. During the analyzed period, interest in the LGBTQ-focused dating app peaked on the week of July 14, 2024, with 100 index points.

Between January and March 2021, the most searched Google keyword on YouTube.com was "youtube," with close to *** million average monthly searches. The second leading keyword was "youtube to mp3," which is usually used by people to look for software to download music as mp3 files from videos hosted on the platform. Users also tried to reach YouTube TV, a live and on-demand video streaming service available in the United States, with the query "youtube tv" amassing almost *** million average monthly searches in the examined period.

In February 2025, Verizon Media processed **** million online search queries in the United States, and market leader Google processed over **** million search queries. In total, Google accounted for ** percent of the U.S. desktop search queries. Google was also the leading mobile search provider in the United States, accounting for around ** percent of the market as of March 2024.

"What to watch" was the most frequently asked question on Google in 2023. This question generated an average of *** million online search queries per month. "What is my ip" and "do a barrel roll" followed as the most popular Google search questions worldwide with an average of *** million monthly searches each.