Google, Bing nab over 40% of Korea’s web search market

[Courtesy of Google]

Portal search services Google by Google LLC and Bing by Microsoft Corp. continue to expand their market share in the South Korean web search market, with their combined market share exceeding 40 percent.

According to domestic website tracker Internet Trend on Sunday, Naver by Naver Corp. held the top position with a 54.73 percent share of the Korean Web search market. Google followed with 37.2 percent and Bing with 3.6 percent. Local portal Daum had a 3.33 percent share, continuing a downward streak after losing third place to Bing in July 2024.

Google and Bing’s combined market share totaled 40.8 percent, continuing a steady upward trend from July‘s 39.79 percent. Their combined market share has consistently exceeded 40 percent daily throughout August.

Google’s share increased by 0.96 percentage points as of Friday, compared to 36.24 percent in July 2024. Bing‘s share rose from 3.55 percent to 3.6 percent, an increase of 0.05 percentage points. Naver’s share, on the other hand, decreased by 0.85 percentage points from 55.58 percent to 54.73 percent.

Notably, Bing, with a share of 2.98 percent, was behind Daum (3.53 percent) in June but overtook Daum a month afterwards and has remained in third place ever since. Bing’s share growth has been attributed to the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, with the company enhancing its AI capabilities in 2023 by integrating generative AI features such as Copilot into its search functionality.

Naver, which saw a slight decline in market share, has focused on improving its search capabilities. It introduced a search block in early August that displays “popular posts written by people in their 20s.”