Mobile accounts for approximately half of web traffic worldwide. In the last quarter of 2024, mobile devices (excluding tablets) generated 62.54 percent of global website traffic. Mobiles and smartphones consistently hoovered around the 50 percent mark since the beginning of 2017, before surpassing it in 2020. Mobile traffic Due to low infrastructure and financial restraints, many emerging digital markets skipped the desktop internet phase entirely and moved straight onto mobile internet via smartphone and tablet devices. India is a prime example of a market with a significant mobile-first online population. Other countries with a significant share of mobile internet traffic include Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya. In most African markets, mobile accounts for more than half of the web traffic. By contrast, mobile only makes up around 45.49 percent of online traffic in the United States. Mobile usage The most popular mobile internet activities worldwide include watching movies or videos online, e-mail usage and accessing social media. Apps are a very popular way to watch video on the go and the most-downloaded entertainment apps in the Apple App Store are Netflix, Tencent Video and Amazon Prime Video.

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, 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 September 2023, Google was the most popular online search engine in Chile with a market share of over 95 percent. Microsoft's Bing ranked second with 2.85 percent of share throughout that period. Furthermore, Google Chrome was used by approximately eight out of ten Chilean internet users.

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.

In 2020, Google was the most popular online search engine in Puerto Rico, accounting for approximately 91.7 percent of web traffic. It was followed by Microsoft's Bing, with a 4.8 percent share that year. In addition, Google also concentrated most of the web traffic in the Dominican Republic.

In 2025, Google was the most used search engine in Morocco, accounting for nearly 97 percent of the web traffic. The next most used search engine was Bing, which made up over two percent of web traffic in Morocco. The number of people using the internet in Morocco stood at 35.3 million in 2025, the fifth highest amount of internet users in Africa.

Google dominated the Egyptian web traffic. As of November 2022, close to 97.5 percent of the web traffic was referred via this search engine. Bing was its closest competitor, with only 1.5 percent. Yahoo! came in third place, with a share of almost 0.3 percent.

Throughout 2020, Google was the most popular online search engine in the Dominican Republic with a market share of nearly 95.6 percent. It was followed by Microsoft's Bing with 3.13 percent of share during that period. Likewise, Google also topped the ranking in Brazil.

Google was by far the most popular online search engine in Colombia in 2020, accounting for almost 98 percent of web traffic. Microsoft's Bing ranked second with slightly over one percent of share during the period. Moreover, Google Chrome concentrated most of the web traffic in Colombia.

This statistic highlights the distribution of total and mobile organic search visits in the United States as of the first quarter of 2019, by engine. During the measured period, Google accounted for 92 percent of overall organic search engine visits in the United States.

In the six months ending March 2024, the United States accounted for 26.95 percent of traffic to the online search website Google.com. India was ranked second, accounting for 4.52 percent of web visits to the platform, with Brazil coming in third place with 4.35 percent.

Google is the leading search engine in South Africa. As of January 2023, almost 96 percent of the searches on the web were conducted through this search engine. Its closest contender was Bing, with a share of 3.5 percent. Yahoo! ranked third with a share of only 0.2 percent.

As of the fourth quarter of 2019, 49 percent of Yahoo's U.S. organic search traffic originated from mobile devices. Google had the highest share of organic mobile search traffic with 61 percent, slightly ahead of DuckDuckGo with 58 percent.

In January 2025 mobile devices excluding tablets accounted for over ** percent of web page views worldwide. Meanwhile, over ** percent of webpage views in Africa were generated via mobile. In contrast, just over half of web traffic in North America still took place via desktop connections with mobile only accounting for **** percent of total web traffic. While regional infrastructure remains an important factor in broadband vs. mobile coverage, most of the world has had their eyes on the recent 5G rollout across the globe, spearheaded by tech-leaders China and the United States. The number of mobile 5G subscriptions worldwide is forecast to reach more than ***** billion by 2028. Social media: room for growth in Africa and southern Asia Overall, more than ** percent of the world’s mobile internet subscribers are also active on social media. A fast-growing market, with newcomers such as TikTok taking the world by storm, marketers have been cashing in on social media’s reach. Overall, social media penetration is highest in Europe and America while in Africa and southern Asia, there is still room for growth. As of 2021, Facebook and Google-owned YouTube are the most popular social media platforms worldwide. Facebook and Instagram are most effective With nearly ***** billion users, it is no wonder that Facebook remains the social media avenue of choice for the majority of marketers across the world. Instagram, meanwhile, was the second most popular outlet. Both platforms are low-cost and support short-form content, known for its universal consumer appeal and answering to the most important benefits of using these kind of platforms for business and advertising purposes.

In 2023, most of the global website traffic was still generated by humans but bot traffic is constantly growing. Fraudulent traffic through bad bot actors accounted for 32 percent of global web traffic in the most recently measured period, representing an increase of 1.8 percent from the previous year. Sophistication of Bad Bots on the rise The complexity of malicious bot activity has dramatically increased in recent years. Advanced bad bots have doubled in prevalence over the past two years, indicating a surge in the sophistication of cyber threats. Simultaneously, simple bad bots saw a 6 percent increase compared to the previous year, suggesting a shift in the landscape of automated threats. Meanwhile, areas like entertainment, and law & government face the highest amount of advanced bad bots, with more than 78 percent of their bot traffic affected by evasive applications. Good and bad bots across industries The impact of bot traffic varies across different sectors. Bad bots accounted for over 57.2 percent of the gaming segment's web traffic. Meanwhile, almost half of the online traffic for telecom and ISPs was moved by malicious applications. However, not all bot traffic is considered bad. Some of these applications help index websites for search engines or monitor website performance, assisting users throughout their online search. Therefore, areas like entertainment, food and groceries, and financial services experienced notable levels of good bot traffic, demonstrating the diverse applications of benign automated systems across different sectors.

As of March 2024, canva.com accounted for over 3.26 percent of referral traffic to Google.com. Google's second-largest referral traffic driver was epicgames.com, which generated 3.11 percent of referral traffic to the search platform Google.

As of February 2025, Google was the search engine with the most referrals to webpages in Ghana. It accounted for over 97 percent of the web traffic in the country. This was followed by Bing and Yahoo!, with 2.4 percent and 0.1 percent of the traffic, respectively.

From October 2024 to February 2025, ChatGPT outperformed competing AI-powered search engines in traffic referral, achieving a total growth of 155.52 percent. Perplexity placed second, despite experiencing more significant fluctuations, with a total growth of 54.78 percent by the conclusion of the analyzed period. With a 43.64 percent overall growth, Google's Gemini ranked third among other engines and maintained the most consistent traffic referral rate. Artificial intelligence-driven trends, notably AI-powered search, are changing online traffic patterns. This suggests a more significant change in the way users find information online and is expected to have a knock-on effect on the digital advertising sector.

In May 2025, the United States accounted for 46.62 percent of traffic to the online search website Yahoo.com. Brazil and the United Kingdom ranked second and third, accounting for 4.38 percent and 4.2 percent of web visits to the platform.

In 2024, around ***** percent of the web traffic in Brazil was generated via mobile device, while the web traffic via desktops increased to *****. Meanwhile, Google was the dominant search engine in the South American country, accounting for more than ** percent of the market share.