There’s no doubt that the search engine market is growing at a rapid rate around the globe as more and more people come online. comScore reports that more than 88 per cent of Internet users are outside the US.
Finally there’s a book on the market that addresses this compelling fact and it covers global pay-per-click, SEO, social media, mobile apps, multilingual web analytics and more.
The book “Global Search Engine Marketing: Fine Tuning Your International Search Engine Results” by Anne Kennedy, founder and managing partner of Beyond Ink and Kristján Már Hauksson, founder of Nordic eMarketing and fellow blogger here at Multilingual Search.
The first chapter titled “Can You Afford Not to Think Globally” addresses the sheer size of the global search engine market pointing out that in October 2011 there were 185 billion searches worldwide. That’s nearly 6 billion searches a day, 248+ million searches per hour or 4 million searches per minute. That’s a whole lotta searching going on! It also points out the one size does NOT fit all when doing business online worldwide.
In the second chapter “Common Territory: Search Marketing Without Borders” the authors discuss the commonalities in search engine marketing around the globe including mistakes like having a single English only website, using mechanical translations (my personal pet peeve) and using literal translations of your English keywords. The chapter also covers setting goals, keyword research, talent, localization and other common issues.
Other chapters are divided by countries or regions; China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, India, Nordic countries, Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Canada, Brazil, South America, Mexico, Singapore, as well as Middle Eastern and North African countries.
Each country/regional chapter covers the markets online profile, search market share, common mistakes, ppc, seo, analytics, press releases and ends with a tips section. The search market share was very interesting showing Google’s domination in most countries but also their competition with Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia and Naver in South Korea.
The common mistakes section in each country was interesting as well with revelations like search marketers lumping countries in Asia together, Singapore, China and Hong Kong for example and using direct translations like “mobile phone” in Germany. The tips were also helpful including where to focus more on mobile or which countries have larger broadband penetration where you could use rich media.
There are two additional chapters “SEO/SEM Resources” that covers books, website tools, pr and conferences and “Google Countries and Domains” showing the country, language(s) and the domain of Google search in that country.
As a global search engine marketer with some experience I found this book enlightening and filled with wonderful nuggets of information. This is a book that you not only want to read but refer to quite often as you plan and execute your global search engine marketing strategy.
David Temple
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It is always a challenge to achieves good click-through and sales results within limits of budget. It is nice that the book provides insights on global pay per click search engines like Google AdWords, Overture, Espotting and Mirago.