The search engines most used in Italy

A good positioning in SERP and targeted keyword promotion are the most important things to achieve for the success of any business’ activity on line in the Italian net too.

Three factors are going to put even more in evidence the importance of an efficient search engines optimization: the rapidly increasing number of Italian Internet users, the importance of search engines acting as doorways to the net and the continuous growth of services and products offered on line.

Presently Italy’s on line services are still underdeveloped by a 3-5 years lag if compared to North America, and consequently it is already possible to obtain good results without investing the same amounts it would have been necessary in the USA (Google  Adwords bid rates being far less expensive than in USA).

Of course also in Italy search engines optimization will have to be coherent with all promotional activities and especially with back office service and content management (as in all mature market economies).

Here you will find a small report of search engines which have to primarily considered to reach the highest number of Italian Internet users.

The search engines coverage-preference in Italy (2004 to 2009)

There numbers do not take into any consideration the "Facebook" effect, wich in Italy is very strong (in some panels number of connections to FB has overcame mail checks in April 2009).

For B to C (business to consumer) offers you should necessarily use proper Italian language to have a chance of success, because in Italy (as in France and Spain) English is used and well known only in business activities and a very small part of the population is really able to use it in a commercial evaluation.

This rule is even more important for email activities. A well structured email action will have no possibilities of success if targeted to final consumers and written in English. Moreover in Italy there is a very strict privacy code which considers opt-out actions and spamming activities exactly on the same level and punishes all people responsible for these practices very seriously (even with arrest and other severe penal consequences).