As a digital marketing agency, we are naturally interested in how people search for what they need, whether that be what they search or the language they search in. The UK has a strong multicultural presence, with plenty of nationalities moving here to work and study. This made us think, what languages does the UK search in?
So we went to Google and looked at some of the most searched terms to see what languages are used most when people are searching the web. To analyse Google search data, we compiled a variety of the most searched keywords.
The most used languages on Google in the UK
The most used language in the United Kingdom was unsurprisingly English, with 37million searches, based on our selected keywords.
The primary language was followed by Russian (372,550 searches), Chinese (both simplified (218,520 searches) and traditional (213,820 searches), Ukrainian (134,930 searches), and Turkish (63,290 searches).
Russian and Ukrainian are extremely similar, with some words being the same. However, Ukraine’s involvement amongst the most used languages could be associated with the ongoing war across the Eastern European country, with more than 200,000 up making their way to Britain as of July 2024. Also in the top 10 most searched were Portuguese (61,930), Italian (57,240), Arabic (54,610) and Polish (49,740).
Despite India being the most common place where UK migrants come from, Hindi was not amongst the most searched languages, falling outside the top 25.
There are said to be more than 800,000 Welsh speakers in Wales, although this didn’t translate to Google searches (1,070) with the language being searched less than Lithuanian (2,030), Persian (17,950), and Thai (35,610).
The European countries using English on Google
An estimated 370million people can speak English across the continent. In addition to the natives who speak English at a variety of levels, it’s important to consider the impact expats might have had on results.
With that said, the country that has the most English language searchers per 100,000 people is Iceland.
It is believed that 98% of the population in Iceland speaks English, coupled with its smaller population, Iceland has pride of place at the top with 61,797 searches per 100,000 people.
Following Iceland is the United Kingdom, with 52,347 searches per 100,000 people. In third place is Estonia with 50,907 searches.
On the opposite end of the scale, Russia (124 searches), Belarus (339), and Ukraine (1,721) make up the three countries with the least amount of Google searches.
When looking across the continent as a whole, the European average is 23,381 Google searches per 100,000 people.
Spain (15,963), Portugal (19,410), Germany (16,401), and France (13,552) all come in beneath the European average for the use of English on Google. Whereas, the Netherlands (29,301), Sweden (28,866), and Denmark (27,183) all have more searches than the continental average.
Methodology:
Looking at some of the most searched words in English, we translated them to the most spoken languages in the UK. Once we had our list of keywords, we used a variety of tools to get monthly averages.
To gain an understanding of how English is used across Europe, we analysed some of the most searched English words and used the same tools to get search data.
To work out the number of searches per 100,000 we took the total searches, divided it by the population and times it by 100,000.
Article author
Chiara Riva
Business Development Assistant
