Debunking the Korean Search Engine Market Share in 2017

Follow our debunking process step-by-step but if you can’t wait to get to the conclusion or other sections of the article, head straight to the section through the links below:

1. What the SERPs Say on the Korean Search Engine Market
2. What the Search Volumes Reveal About True Market Shares
3. What the Trends Show on the Usage of Search Engines in Korea
4. What We Can Reasonably Say About South Korea’s Search Engine Market Share

Let’s then start off with:

What the Search Engine Result Pages Say

Sources of the market share data reallly boil down to just a few (some sites don’t even quote their sources). We wanted to see where the top 10 ranking pages obtained their market data from and what their various claims are on the market share.

Here’s what we did:

• Searched for “Korean Search Engine Market Share” on Google.com; searched for the Korean equivalent “국내검색시장점유율” (which actually means “local search market share”) on Google.co.kr
• Visited pages ranking 1-10 (and lower, if necessary) for these keywords
• Identified the sources of the market share data (wherever cited)

Below are tabulated results of the ranking pages and their data source, excluding those pages that do not cite a specific source:

Google.com Results (Open as image)

Google.co.kr Results (Open as image)

As you may have observed from the above tables, the sources of the market share data boil down to just a few. Here’s what those sources say about the market share in Korea (open table as image):

With the above data, we have The Search Monitor and Statcounter on the one hand with Google’s relatively high market share, and then there is comScore, KoreanClick data over the years, and Return on Now with Google’s share much smaller but on the gradual increase even up to 2016.

Is The Search Monitor and Statcounter closer to the truth? It’s not unlikely that Google market share has been on the increase and Naver’s dominance has been challenged by its limitations as a pure search engine, so has the average Korean user finally made the switch to Google and is it now the new face of search in the country?

Or is the comScore, Return on Now, and KoreanClick data more realistic? Isn’t it more likely that Naver has been losing its share gradually over the years and Google still has a long way to go to take on Naver, contrary to what the Statcounter data suggests?

With this split in the market share data quoted by the top-ranking pages, we moved on to compare keyword search volumes on Naver and Google. These should somewhat be a reflection of how much a search engine is being used by the general population. The next section covers what we’ve found with a bit more digging.

What the Search Volumes Say

It’s widespread industry knowledge that Naver’s market share has fallen over the years and Google’s has picked up (let’s concern ourselves with just these two engines). So let’s try to gauge how significant the differences in market shares are by comparing search volumes of a sample of keywords on Naver and Google. Since we cannot isolate the search volumes to South Korea on Naver’s Keyword Tool, we did not apply any location filter on the Adwords Keyword Planner either, for consistency.

Image: Naver Keyword Tool vs Google Keyword Planner Interface

For each of 6 different categories, we compared Naver and Google search volumes for 5 keywords (Jan-April 2017), combining both desktop and mobile volumes.

Highlighted in green for each keyword is the search volume that is higher of the two search engines. If Naver search volume is greater than that of Google for a keyword, the Naver search volume is shown in green.

The column “Naver/Google” is Naver search volume divided by Google search volume, indicated how many times Naver search volume is compared to Google’s. The number is highlighted if Naver search volume is more than 10 times that of Google (open table as image).

Here are some key takeaways from the above search volumes:

• • Naver search volumes are much higher for travel keywords – as was expected, since Naver is the go-to search engine for topics with a broader audience and people expecting to consume user-generated content.
  • Naver search volumes are also higher for definitions – Korean keywords are generally not very longtail but broad keywords that signal an intent to search for definitions or short answers appear to have comparatively higher search volume on Naver.
  • Some keyword search volumes are indeed higher on Google, but there isn’t as much a gap between Google and Naver than for keywords where Naver has higher volume.
  • Overall, judging from the sample of search volumes we have here, it doesn’t seem likely that Google is winning the majority market share in Korea in 2017 like the Statcounter data earlier on suggested.

So comparing keyword search volumes have given us a more concrete evidence supporting the persistent of Naver as the dominant Korean search engine. Is there anything else we could look at to support or refute this finding? We move on to simple but powerful tools to compare search trends for the search engines.

What the Trends Say

Here we looked at Naver Trends (renamed as Datalab), comparing the keyword trends for “Google” and “Daum”. Assuming Naver is the go-to search engine for internet users, identifying the trend for other search engines on Naver itself will offer an idea of which direction market share is moving toward.

Delightfully, Naver’s Datalab can go as far back as 2007. Below is the trend comparison for “구글” (Google) and “다음” (Daum) from January 2007 to May 2017:

The graph does indeed reflect the market share data that some of the sources revealed – Daum declining, and Google consistently picking up.

This was interesting so we decided to look up Google Trends as well. Applying the same timeframe but this time comparing the trend for “네이버” (Naver) and “다음” (Daum) on Google, we see the following:

There was an update in 2011 but looking from then and beyond, both Naver and Daum appear to be on the decline – again, reflective of some of the market share data we saw earlier.

What We Can (After All This) Reasonably Say About the Market Share

It can be very tempting to rely on data from Statcounter – it’s highly ranked so easily found, it claims to show the most recent data (as recent as the month immediately prior to the current month), and it seems like a reliable source of data (it’s a familiar source for various data sets).

But from what we’ve seen from other market data sources, actual keyword search volumes, and clear trends in search engine keywords, it is unlikely that Google has indeed taken over the Korean search market as Statcounter seems to show.

It is more realistic to stand behind the sources that show Naver with the majority market share, Daum coming in second, and Google in third, but with shares of the local search engines falling over the years and Google gaining more presence in the market.

We, therefore, turn to the KoreanClick data for 2016 for the latest search engine market share figures for Korea (at least for now):

The data from KoreanClick for 2016 shows that the dominant search engine in Korea is still Naver (74%), followed by another local search engine Daum (16%), and finally Google (10%). As we’ve seen in the previous sections, while Google’s market share in Korea is small, it has been growing quickly over the years and cannot be overlooked.

What do you think about the debunking of the search engine market share?

Have you come across other data that can help with understanding the Korean search engine market?

Let us know what you think!