Google accounted for 87.3% of all Australian searches during February, according to the latest data from Experian Hitwise.

The monthly search data report revealed an increase in Google’s dominance of the Australian search market. Google Australia accounted for 74.6%, an increase on the previous month of 2.8%, and Google.com 12.7% of all Australian searches.

Among other search engines search.yahoo.com had 4.5%, and au.search.yahoo.com got 2.63%. Bing had 4% of searches.

Alan Long, Experian Hitwise research director for APAC said: “These results highlight Google’s continued market dominance that looks set to continue as no substantial challengers have emerged in the past year.

“Our research team continually monitors search engine performance and it is more likely we will see competition for mass audiences arise from the social networking sector than from new entrants in the search engine industry, While Google remain the dominant search engine, opportunities for marketers are still to be found on other search engines. Focusing marketing efforts across a number of search engines allows for marketers to lower their acquisition costs.”

“Businesses need to closely monitor Bing and other competing sources to chart their impact on Google and its dominance of the search market. As the spread of search engines diversifies businesses must ensure they focus marketing efforts across the different sites in order to remain competitive,” added Long.