Watching trends on Google is much like watching Pinky and the Brain! You might remember the well-known phrase from this cartoon series…

“What are we going to do tonight, Brain.”
“The same thing we do every night Pinky, try to take over the World!!”

If you have not seen this cartoon series, the words may well make you think of Google. Google has literally taken over the World and is continually taking ground in Search with ever-increasing Market Share figures.

The latest figures released by Hitwise primarily confirms the growth Google is enjoying while quite a few blog posts and articles in the last few days also comment on Google’s global market share and dominance.

While we are mostly familiar with Google’s reign in Search on the International frontlines, we might not know the length of Google’s reach at local data centers.

It is always interesting to look at numbers, so here are some interesting figures to look at (based on HitWise and ComScore figures).

In the United States

• Google accounted for 69% of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending June 28, 2008
• Yahoo! Search – 19.62%
• MSN Search – 5.46%
• Ask.com 4.17%
• Remaining 42 search engines – 1.70% of U.S. searches

In the United Kingdom

• Google (Google.co.uk and Google.com) accounted for 87% of all UK searches in June 2008 representing
• 10% increase compared to June 2007.
• Yahoo! accounted for 4% of UK searches in June 2008, a 2% increase compared to April 2008.
• MSN accounted for 3.72%, a 2% increase compared to April 2008.
• Ask accounted for 3.07%, a 6% increase compared to April 2008.

In Australia

• Google search accounted for 88% of all AU searches in June 2008 representing a 12% increase compared to June 2007.
• MSN search accounted for 7% of AU searches in June 2008.
• Yahoo! search accounted for 4.00% of AU searches in June 2008.

I have also found some interesting data, albeit somewhat outdated, of more local search data for various countries worldwide.

I am desperately looking to find some information on Google’s market share figures for South Africa and hope to report on that soon.