Study: Delaware Least Likely State To Use Google, While Yahoo Is More Popular In Southern & Midwest States

Using data from more than 35 million search queries performed in 2012, SEO company WebpageFX  set out to determine search engine market share by state for Google, Bing and Yahoo.

According to their study, Google dominates across the country, taking 70 percent or more of search engine market share in nearly all 50 states. Delaware represented the only state where Google won less than 70 percent of searches, with 69.49 percent market share.

While Google won more than 80 percent of the market in many states, Hawaii, Oregon, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and Colorado led in Google market share, with each state seeing more than 85 percent of searches performed using Google.

Bing earned 8.3724 percent of the national market share, proving to be most popular in North Dakota. Bing won 14.68 percent of the searches performed in North Dakota, followed by Wyoming and Delaware where it captured 13 percent of the market, and Iowa and New Mexico with 12 percent of the market.

California represented the state with the lowest Bing market share at only 5.28 percent.

Of the three search engines, Yahoo scored the lowest market share nationwide at 7.7534 percent, with a majority of Yahoo searches happening in the Southern and Midwest regions. Yahoo won its largest audience in Arkansas, with 11.69 percent of the market share, followed by West Virginia, Oklahoma and Ohio.

Yahoo’s home state of Washington was the least likely to use the search engine, with Yahoo owning only 4.16 percent of Washington’s market share.

While these numbers represent market share figures for all of 2012, comScore’s monthly search engine market share report for last month reflect somewhat smaller Google numbers with much higher totals for Bing and Yahoo. According to comScore’s report, Bing’s U.S. search market share hit an all-time high last month at 17 percent.