Think search, think Google, right? That certainly seems to be the case for the majority of people, with Google enjoying somewhere in the region of 90% global search engine market share. This fact has pretty much been the norm for many years too.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share
Is that about to be reliably challenged for the first time though? Well, enter Apple… There are some rumblings in the tech world that Apple might be building their own browser-based search engine. If that’s true, could it be a real contender to Google Search?
Apple have the financial clout and potentially the resources to build a credible search engine. Some ex-Google employees have reportedly joined the ranks at Apple too, and there’s possibly more activity recently from Apple’s web crawler, AppleBot, which scans the internet for web content.
Would a significant number of people use Apple Search?
Apple are one of the wealthiest and most popular brands worldwide, and have a significant market share of computing & mobile devices. If they made Apple Search the default on their devices, they certainly stand a chance of biting a chunk out of Google’s market share.
Bing being the default search engine on Windows devices is exactly how Microsoft have managed to hold on to some of the search market – albeit only about 2.8% globally. Apple’s share could be similar, and if the search engine delivers a good experience for users, it could be even more.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats - OS Market Share
What would this mean for website SEO and online marketing?
That’s a big question to answer in one blog post and probably too early to predict. However, given that Apple pride themselves on being a little different, its possible this could mean changes in how websites offer their content for search in order it’s ‘Apple Search’ friendly/optimised.
Google currently has their own set of tags & tools for web pages to assist SEO specific to Google Search; maybe Apple will do the same. However, it really comes down to how much market share Apple manage to get as to whether focussing on them would be worth it. With limited time and resources, it’s likely most of the focus will remain on Google Search for the foreseeable future.
However, Apple Search may open doors in terms of paid ads. Apple could introduce their own online advertising platform, much like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. We know that advertising on Bing can work well for people, despite the smaller market share. It’s possible that advertising on Apple will be worth it too.
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