Apple’s iOS, Mac drive the most search queries

Linux, Windows have the smallest proportion of browsers activity going toward search engine queries

While Google definitely has the monopoly on search engine traffic, holding onto a staggering 92% of all searches, Android browsers fall behind mobile iOS and Mac OS browsers in the amount of traffic driving those queries, according to research out Wednesday led by the ad network Chitka.

Apple’s iOS mobile platform drives the highest proportion of search queries: 54%. That means that more than half of the browser activity on an iPhone is dedicated to that little search bar in the corner. Macintosh OS is the second-most search-friendly, with roughly 48% of all web traffic on Macs going in the direction of search queries. The universal average percentage of search queries across all major platforms is about 36%, according to Chitika.

Coming in third place is the Google-centric Android, with 43%.

And Microsoft systems are next in line, driving nearly one-third of its browser traffic to search-related services -- one would hope, for their sake that it would be Bing searches, but that seems like too much to expect.

Linux experience the fewest searches for its browser with 14% -- but since Linux is used primarily for internal operational and development services, its users would not be expected to be access much more than company software and platforms. 

Pulling from this Linux hypothesis, since Chitka provided little reasoning why each browser got its respective results, this would also explain with Microsoft was also low on the list. Microsoft is a business-focused operating system, while Mac and Android have larger individual consumer pools that use their services.

While this data is very limited in its scope, it can help marketers understand and focus online campaigns to perhaps direct consumer-focused campaigns more heavily on Mac OS and iOS Web surfers while business-centric campaigns could identify Microsoft and Linux users. 

In Chitka's research, it also found that Apple’s mobile iOS faired the best with localized searches, with 36% of all searches on the platform dedicated to local results. Surprisingly, Linux also experienced 36% localized searched. And Android came in at 28%.

Macintosh and Windows saw the lowest proportion of searched focused on local results, at 23% and 19% respectively.