Filed Under: Articles, SEO, SEO News
Reading up on Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, which is a great read even for a seasoned SEO pro, he wrote that Scandinavia has many strong local players, but didn’t know which ones. Well – here’s the lowdown Aaron:
Norway and Search Engines
Factoids:
Internet Usage Statistics:
3,140,000 Internet users as of March/05, 68.3% penetration, according to Computer Industry Almanac. (As far as I know right above 70% in 2006)Latest Population Estimate:
4,600,644 population for 2005, according to world-gazetteer.6th richest land in the world (GDP per capita) according to CIA Fact Book
Being from Norway, it’s only natural that that I’m well familiarized with all of the big players in the Norwegian search market. Norway has always been one of the leading countries when it comes to Internet use per citizen, and has bred some really strong local search engine brands.
In Norway, except from the obvious ones; Google, Yahoo and MSN, there are a few serious competitors that in some markets actually dominate The Big Three. In fact, MSN and Yahoo are not very popular in Norway at all.
The web savvy part of the population seem to prefer Google.no, while the more traditional markets seems to be dominated by either Kvasir or the new kid on the block; Sesam
Kvasir.no
Aside from Google.no, Kvasir is the search engine that holds the biggest market share in Norway, is a part of the Scandinavian Eniro and has been around since 1995.
The search engine was initially inspired by Yahoo – part search engine and part directory service and quickly gained trust and popularity among the Norwegian population. Kvasir get their SERPS from Google.
Kvasir holds a tremendous market share in some business areas – usually non-tech savvy and more traditional markets and used to be well established in Denmark and Sweden as well, but is as far as I know re branded as Eniro.dk and Eniro.se.
Sesam.no
Sesam is owned by Schibsted Søk AS, was launched in October/November 2005, and has become a serious contended in the Norwegian search market. The company I work for, Synlighet.no played an important role in the development of the search engine – in fact, the company hired one of our senior staff members after its launch.
This search engine is also based on Fast technology, while their PPC part is based on Overture. In addition to their seach and PPC services, they have a directory called Internettkatalogen.no.
I could literally write an essay on both services, but it would probably be a good idea to follow the NDAs…
Yelo – The little engine that couldn’t
Owned by Eniro/Findexa, Yelo was launched on October 18th 2005 as a supporting service to Norwegian Yellow Pages, Gule Sider.
It goes without saying that when two Norwegian search engines are launched at the same time, there can be only one winner. Three months later they announced that they will keep their focus on their existing brands Kvasir, Gule Sider and SOL (Scandinavia Online) and basically left Yelo out in the woods to die.
In addition there are literally tons of business directories, where most of them are pure junk and a waste of time and money.
Realizing the marketing potential
It’s a paradox, though, that even with the heavy use of internet among the Norwegian population, search engine marketing – or internet marketing in general – is still in its infancy.
Big actors in the e-business and e-commerce marked have yet to realize the huge potential that lies in this kind of marketing – and those that do can tap into virtually virgin territories.
While the PPC spend has been quite substantial for quite a while, more and more companies become aware of the potential of SEO & viral marketing and has given the very few real SEO companies in Norway and exceptional growth rate; the company I work for has almost quadrupled the bottom line in 2006 over 2005. Our biggest challenge right now is to find enough (talented) people.
Sweden and Search Engines
Factoids:
Internet Usage Statistics:
6,800,000 Internet users as of October/05, 74.9% of the population, according to the International Telecommunication Union - ITU.Latest Population Estimate:
9,076,757 population for 2006, according to World Gazetteer.26th richest land in the world (GDP per capita) according to CIA Fact Book
I must admit that neither the Swedish or Danish search market is my specialty, so if any of you reading this happen to have any in depth info, please do contribute with a comment or two. Generally speaking, though, it seems to me that the Swedish companies are a bit ahead of Norway when it comes to SEO/SEM awareness, but not by much.
Eniro.se
Is one of the biggest in Sweden, and, like Kvasir did until just recently, they pull the results come from Google. They also have a directory called Länkguiden. Like most of the Scandinavian search engines, you can also search for phone numbers for businesses as well as individuals.
Sunet.se
Sunet is one of the best webdirectories in Sweden, it takes about 2 - 3 days to get in there and you can have an english and swedish version of your site, you will be listed in 3 diffrent categories.
Sweseek.com
Sweseek is a regional search engine, its a must that the site is in Swedish and has a SE TLD. The directory does not require an url, so you can be listed with just a name and phone number. Sweseek also have some ODP data.
Denmark and Search Engines
Factoids:
Internet Usage Statistics:
3,720,000 Internet users as of March/2005, 68.7% of the population,
according to Computer Industry Almanac.Latest Population Estimate:
5,411,596 population for 2005, according to world-gazetteer.13th richest land in the world (GDP per capita) according to CIA Fact Book
Eniro.dk
Anyone from Denmark, please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but I assume the same demographic patterns for Kvasir.no goes for Kvasir.dk - less web savvy users and massive domination in certain business areas over Google.dk. Feature-wise identical with Eniro.se.
Jubii.dk
Jubii was established at the same time as Norwegian Kvasir - 1995. The company is owned by Lycos and is naturally based on Lycos search technology and is a huge competitor to Eniro and Google. According to their web site, they are the biggest search portal in Denmark.
So there you have it - the lowdown of the top Scandinavian search engines and internet usage. If you have any comments, or any in depth info, please do leave a comment!
Sverre Sjøthun
5 Comments so far
Leave a comment
Heisann!
I’m a Norwegian, and I’ve been doing web apps, marketing online since 1996. Send me an email, and let’s see if we can work together. Jeg snakker norsk! 
Hei, Jon
By jon rognerud on 12.10.06 2:34 am | Permalink
I’d like to add that Sweseek is a web directory used for link building and maintained by a Swedish SEO company called SEO Logik, www.seo.se . The companies in the right columns, “Utvalda företag”, are their clients. That also goes for the companies in the bottom section starting with 24hpoker. Finally, Sesam is now available in Sweden since not so long ago.
By Stefan Bäcklund on 12.11.06 9:19 am | Permalink
As for the Danish search market I generally see these market share patterns across all the stats I have access to.
Google: 85%
Eniro: ~5%
Jubii: ~5% (good typo traffic)
MSN: ~5% (mostly short terms / single words)
It’s just some general stats I “compiled” in my head. It’s based on a wide variety of niches, but there’s a chance that Google is over presented since that’s what most of my SEO efforts is focused on…
By Stefan Juhl on 01.22.07 6:10 pm | Permalink
Excellent to both Stefans!
I’ve been doing quite a bit of research lately on the paid directory listings from Kvasir, and for the most part, it doesn’t look very good.
I’m seriously considering moving, or at least testing their PPC alternative. Kvasir as a search engine is capable of delivering a massive amount of traffic, so the traffic is there, but with their directory listing model, I think the budget might be spent more effectively on PPC.
Since they’re 302′ing the home page link, it doesn’t add any link value either, so it’s almost a nobrainer…
By Sverre on 01.25.07 7:08 pm | Permalink
Hi!
What about startsiden in Norway? I see many costumers getting a lot of traffic from them.
I guess the 3 main players in Norway is Google, Kvasir and Startsiden. with markets share of roughly 60/20/15 What is your feel for market share?
Ludvik
By Ludvik Høegh-Krohn on 02.21.08 12:37 pm | Permalink
RSS
TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
