Search Marketing in France

Search Laboratory have expertise in French search marketing. There are many important considerations when performing search engine optimisation and pay per click marketing in France that go beyond the language, character set and culture. This page provides an insight into some of the issues as well as some important information regarding search marketing in French.

If you would like further information on our French search marketing services and how they can directly help your business, please contact us now for advice.

When we find information related to France and search engine marketing we add it here. Some information is common accross all countries, but other useful information you may find about one country or language may not exist for another. Please keep checking back as we update these pages frequently.

French On Line Market

Google is the dominant player in France. You have to look a long way down the latest Alexa ratings to see the next search engine. Even historical winners such as Viola.fr are way down against Google.

Other Engines that make up the search landscape in France are Infoseek France, Lycos France, Pagesjaunes (white and yellow pages, all the french telephone numbers! Very useful for finding family), Voila, Voila.fr, Yahoo! France and Altavista in French.

French portals include Club-Internet, iFrance and Wanadoo.

PPC in France

Google is the important PPC engine in France, with Yahoo and MSN bringing up the rear. France was one of the first countries in which Microsoft launched Ad Center, so the impact of this has yet to be seen.

Yahoo used to power the PPC results in Voila.fr and Orange.fr, but in Summer 2007 we noticed that this changed to Google results without any specific announcement. This makes Google PPC really the only major player in France.

Other Information

The French Yellow Pages organisation’s online division has just launched a free version or ’Pay’-Per-Call for its advertisers. From now on, anyone who advertises online will be able to include a free telephone number which gives them the opportunity, says Pages Jaunes "To generate qualified leads at lower cost and win more business and better manage their prospecting."

Google remains the all-powerful search engine in France - but then Pages Jaunes is French and has a long history and a large advertiser base. This is an agressive approach to the market place which anyone which has found Yellow Pages style advertising in France to be successful - would be wise to take up!

Need Advice?

Search Laboratory can help you take your message to France. This can be using a fully localized site or a small subset of the site to test the market. Either way, with full search marketing to truly realise your on line potential. Please contact us for free advice. Taking the first steps into France is easier than you might think.