In April 2024, Google was the most popular search engine in the UK, holding a market share of ***** percent across all devices. Bing had a relatively large market share of approximately **** percent in second place, followed by Yahoo! with approximately **** percent.

In January 2025, Google remained by far the most popular search engine in the UK, holding a market share of ***** percent across all devices. That month, Bing had a market share of approximately **** percent in second place, followed by Yahoo! with approximately **** percent. The EU vs Google Despite Google’s dominance of the search engine market, maintaining its position at the top has not been a smooth ride. Google’s market share saw a decline in the summer of 2018, plummeting to an all-time-low in July. The search engine experienced a similar dip in June and July 2017. These two low points coincided with the European Commission’s antitrust charges against the company, both of which were unprecedented in the now decade-long duel between both parties. As skepticism towards search engine platforms grows in line with public concern regarding censorship and data privacy, alternative services like Duckduckgo offer users both information protection and unfiltered results. Despite this, it still held less than *** percent of the industry’s market share as of June 2021. Perception of fake news in the UK According to a questionnaire conducted in the United Kingdom in 2018, **** percent of respondents had come across inaccurate news on social media at least once before. Rising concerns over fake news, or information which has been manipulated to influence the public has been a hot topic in recent years. The younger generation however, remains skeptical with nearly **** of Generation Z claiming to be either unconcerned about fake news, or believed that it did not exist altogether.

We asked UK consumers about "Most used search engines by brand" and found that "Google" takes the top spot, while "WebCrawler" is at the other end of the ranking.These results are based on a representative online survey conducted in 2025 among ***** consumers in the UK.

The Search Engine industry is highly concentrated, with three companies controlling almost the entire industry; the largest company, Alphabet Inc., has a market share greater than 96%. Search engines provide web portals that generate and maintain extensive databases of internet addresses. Industry companies generate most, if not all, of their revenue from advertising. Technological growth has resulted in more households being connected to the Internet, and a boom in e-commerce has made the industry increasingly innovative. Over the past decade, a climb in the percentage of households with internet access has supported revenue growth, while increasing technological integration with daily life has increased demand for industry services. A greater proportion of transactions being carried out online has driven innovation in targeted digital advertising, with declines in rival advertising formats like print media and television increasing the focus on digital marketing as a core strategy. Industry revenue is expected to increase at a compound annual rate of 4.7%, to reach £5.1 billion over the five years through 2024-25. Revenue is forecast to climb by 4.7% in 2024-25. Industry profit has remained high, expanding to 34.2% in 2024-25. The rise of the mobile advertising market and the proliferation of mobile devices mean there are plenty of opportunities for search engines, which are expected to capitalise on these trends further moving forward. Smartphones could disrupt the industry's status quo, as the rising popularity of devices that do not use Google as the default engine benefits other search providers. Technological advancements that incorporate user data are anticipated to make it easier to tailor advertisements and develop new ways of using consumer data. Industry revenue is forecast to jump at a compound annual rate of 6% over the five years through 2029-30, to reach £6.8 billion.

Market Size statistics on the Search Engines industry in United Kingdom

Number of Businesses statistics on the Search Engines industry in the UK

In January 2025, Google had the highest market share by far with **** percent of the desktop search engine market in the UK. Bing and Yahoo! followed, representing a share of **** percent and *** percent each.

Employment statistics on the Search Engines industry in the UK

In January 2025 Google represented a market of share of ***** percent across all devices, maintaining its post as the most popular search engine in the United Kingdom since January 2018. Google competitors in the UK After Google, the second most popular search engine site in the UK is Bing. Bing had a market share of **** percent as of January 2024. Yahoo! had a *** percent share of the search engine market in the UK during the same month. Search engines in the UK Further information on the use of search engines in the United Kingdom can be found in the Statista dossier on search engines in the United Kingdom, and more information on Google in the UK can be found in the Google in the United Kingdom Statista dossier.  

In 2024, ** percent of search engine users in the United Kingdom (UK) thought that some of the websites would be accurate and some won't be. Meanwhile, the share of respondents who expressed their opinion that the websites listed in the search results would contain accurate and unbiased information jumped from ** percent to ** percent in comparison to the previous year. During the most recent survey periods, it was revealed that around *** percent of responding individuals who had ever used search engines reported that they did not think of accuracy or unbiased information and rather used the sites they liked the look of.

In January 2025, Google represented ***** percent of the UK's mobile search engine market share. Yahoo! ranked second, with **** percent, while all other search hosts also representing less than *** percent each.

In January 2025, Google's mobile search market share in the United Kingdom was 97.55 percent. Despite the search engine remaining with a similar referral share for mobile devices throughout the years, Google's quota on desktop devices in the UK has significantly reduced during the latest analyzed month.

In April 2023, desktop computer searches represented ***** percent of the search engine market in the UK. Mobile searches followed with ***** percent, with the remaining **** percent for consoles.

A survey conducted in the United Kingdom (UK) in September 2019 revealed that 40.7 percent of respondents would switch to a different search engine if it had a better quality of results. This was followed by nearly 29 percent of respondents who said they would do the same if the search engine did not collect any personal data about them or their searches. For 3.02 percent of the respondents, being able to customize the layout was a motivating factor for switching search engines.

Market shares of leading search engines in the UK

As of September 2020, Google was by far the most popular search engine in the UK and held a market share of approximately 86.6 percent. Bing had a market share of approximately 9.7 percent in second place, followed by Yahoo! with nearly 2.2 percent. The mobile search engine market accounted for 47.6 percent of search in the UK. This was followed by desktop computer searches, with a market share of 45.5 percent.

Internet usage in the UK

Internet penetration rate in the UK has increased nearly three-fold over the last nineteen years, reaching 87 percent in 2019, up from 30 percent in 2000. In 2019, 91 percent of individuals in the UK said they accessed the internet daily. Internet usage via any device or location was highest among individuals aged between 16 and 44 years old in 2019, with at least 98 percent of individuals going online.

In 2022, the majority of search engine users in the United Kingdom (UK) remained relatively skeptical about the overall truthfulness of information they found online through search engines. On one side, 47 percent of respondents claimed that only some of the information they found online was truthful, while 46 percent of the interviewees believed in most of the information provided by these tools. When thinking about the search engines themselves, around 65 percent of respondents thought that some of the websites would be accurate and some would not be when displaying search results.

In January 2024, Bing held a **** percent share of the search market in the United Kingdom (UK) across all devices. Meanwhile, Google held a much larger share of the UK's online search market.

Bing on the world stage  Google holds a similar share of the global desktop search market as it does in the UK. Outside of the UK, Bing attracts an increasing ***** percent share of the market. Worldwide, Bing regularly attracts more than *** billion unique monthly visitors.

Google and mobile: an unfair advantage?  Bing held just a *** percent of the mobile search market in the UK in June 2021. Despite being significantly lower than their overall share, this was still good enough to give Bing second place in the market, due to Google’s absolute dominance of mobile search in the UK. According to European regulators, however, the means with which Google achieved their dominance is neither fair nor legal.

In 2019, Google was fined *** billion euros for effectively forcing manufacturers of android-based equipment to bundle Chrome and Google search with their devices, in order to access other Google services. As a result of that ruling, users setting up android devices in Europe from the start of 2020 will be able to choose from a list of available default search providers. The available options of the list will vary country to country, based on a bidding process in which rival search engines indicate to Google exactly how much they would be willing to pay per user selecting their company as the default search provider.

According to data from Pi Datametrics, the most searched term on Google from January to April 2020 in the United Kingdom (UK) was "airpods".

"Social media" and "Search engines (e.g., Google)" are the top two answers among UK consumers in our survey on the subject of "Sources of inspiration for new products".The survey was conducted online among 4,751 respondents in the UK, in 2025.

Full database of the link structure of all 112 UK universities, as of June-July 2006

In March 2024, Google.com was the leading website in the United Kingdom. The search platform accounted for over 16.16 percent of desktop web traffic in the UK, ahead of second-ranked video site YouTube.com with 11.86 percent.