Google captures 75% share of U.K. search engine market in February

Google dominated the search engine market in the United Kingdom in February, referring three out of every four searches, according to online marketing services firm WebSideStory Inc.

Google last month referred an average of 74.67% of all U.K. visitors to other sites on the web, compared to just 9.3% for Yahoo, its nearest competitor, according to the WebSideStory Index, a new statistical barometer. Google’s search referral percentage in the U.K. exceeds both the U.S. average (55.39%) for the month and the global average (62.4%).

“Even moreso in the U.K. than in the U.S., when people think of search, they think of Google,” said Rand Schulman, WebSideStory chief marketing officer. “This has large implications for U.K. marketers, whose search engine marketing and optimization strategies should be Google-centric.”

Also in the top five in terms of search referrals were MSN (5.46%), AOL (4.21%) and Ask Jeeves (2.28%).

WebSide Story based the index on a sample of more than four million daily Internet users.