Has Google Overtaken Naver In South Korea?

Since roughly 2006 Naver has been the leading search site in South Korea. Consistently Google has been unable to break through and — according to various traffic estimates — has less than 5 percent of the market there. That’s as recently as Q4 of last year according to data I’ve seen.

Mysteriously, however, StatCounter is now showing Google soundly defeating Naver, and having done so since February of last year. I’m not in the habit of checking the status of the Korean search market often so this is the first time I’ve seen the StatCounter chart.

Everything I’ve seen and read shows Naver controlling something between 70 percent and 80 percent of the market in South Korea. Therefore it would appear that there’s something very wrong with the data in StatCounter’s chart. Alternatively it may be that StatCounter is measuring a very small and selective sample of Korean websites.