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Top Search Engines

 In fact, several alternative search engines want to take Google’s throne, but none is ready (yet) to even pose a threat. Google is the most popular search engine, with an amazing 91.58% market share compared to 3.01% of second place Bing.

Best Search Engines 2023

Nevertheless, other search engines are worth considering, and the best Google alternatives are presented below.

List of the 10 best search engines in 2024, ranked by popularity.

  1. Google
  2. Microsoft Bing
  3. Yahoo
  4. Baidu
  5. Yandex
  6. DuckDuckGo
  7. Ask.com
  8. Ecosia
  9. Aol.com
  10. Internet Archive

1. Google

Google

No need for further introductions. Google holds first place in search with a stunning difference of 88.57% from second place Bing. Google first launched 25 years ago (1998) and quickly became the top search engine because of its ability to deliver accurate answers to users’ queries in the fastest way possible.

According to statistics from Statista and Statcounter, Google dominates the market in all countries on any device (desktop, mobile, and tablet). In particular, Google’s desktop market share is 81.74%, and mobile market share is 95.49%.

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Why is Google the most popular search engine?

The quality of its search results made Google the most popular and trusted search engine. Google is using sophisticated algorithms to present the most accurate results to users.

Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, came up with the idea that websites referenced by other websites are more important than others and thus deserve a higher ranking in the search results.

Over the years, the Google ranking algorithm has been enriched with hundreds of other factors (including the help of AI and machine learning) and still remains the most reliable way to find exactly what you are looking for on the Internet.

Google is handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, and its index holds hundreds of terabytes of information.

2. Microsoft Bing

Microsoft Bing

The best alternative search engine to Google is Microsoft Bing. Bing’s search engine share over the years is between 2.83% and 12.31%.

Bing is Microsoft’s attempt to challenge Google in search, but despite their efforts, they still have not convinced users that their search engine can be as reliable as Google.

Their search engine market share is constantly low even though Bing is the default search engine on Windows PCs.

In 2023, Bing was faster than Google to release an AI Chatbot service (Bing Chat) based on the popular GPT4, but despite the initial acceptance by users, their market share remained at low levels.

Bing originated from Microsoft’s previous search engines (MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Live Search), and according to Wikipedia, it is the #26 most visited website on the Internet.

3. Yahoo

Yahoo

Yahoo is one of the most popular email providers, and its web search engine holds third place in search with an average of 1.24% market share.

From October 2011 to October 2015, Yahoo search was powered exclusively by Bing. In October 2015, Yahoo agreed with Google to provide search-related services, and until October 2018, the results of Yahoo were powered by Google.

As of October 2019, Yahoo! Search is once again provided exclusively by Microsoft Bing.

Yahoo is also the default search engine for Firefox browsers in the United States (since 2014).

Yahoo’s web portal is very popular and ranks as the 9th most visited website on the Internet (According to Wikipedia).

4. Baidu

Baidu

Baidu has a global market share between 0.68% and 11.26%.

Baidu was founded in 2000 and is China’s most popular search engine. Its market share is increasing steadily, and according to Wikipedia, Baidu is serving billions of search queries per month. It is currently ranked at position 6 in the Wikipedia Website Rankings.

Although Baidu is accessible worldwide, it is only available in Chinese.

Besides search services, Baidu offers other products for the Chinese audience, like Baidu Maps and Baidu Baike (similar to Wikipedia).  For many, Baidu is referred to as the “Google” of China.

5. Yandex

Yandex

Yandex, Russia’s most popular search engine, has a global market share between 0.5% and 1.16%.

According to Wikipedia, Yandex.ru is among the 10 most popular websites on the Internet, with a ranking position of 8 in Russian.

Yandex presents itself as a technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning.

According to Wikipedia, Yandex operates the largest search engine in Russia, with about 65% market share in that country.

6. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo’s search engine market share is around 0.58%.

According to DuckDuckGo traffic stats, they are serving more than 3 billion searches per month (compared to Google’s 3.5 billion searches per day), but still, their overall market share is constantly below 0.6%.

Unlike what most people believe, DuckDuckGo does not have a search index of its own (like Google and Bing), but it generates its search results using various sources.

In other words, they don’t have their own data, but they depend on other sources (like Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, and StackOverflow) to provide answers to users’ questions.

This is a big limitation compared to Google, which has a set of algorithms to determine the best results from all the websites available on the Internet.

On the positive side, DuckDuck Go has a clean interface, does not track users, and is not fully loaded with ads.

You can use DuckDuckGo through any browser, as a browser extension, or download their dedicated browser app from App Store and Google Play.

7. Ask.com

Ask

Formerly known as Ask Jeeves, Ask.com receives approximately 0.42% of the search engine market share. ASK is based on a question/answer format where other users answer most questions or are in the form of polls.

It also has the general search functionality, but the results returned lack quality compared to Google, Bing, and Yahoo.

According to SimilarWeb, Ask.com receives around 36 million visits per month.

8. Ecosia

Ecosia

Ecosia is a Berlin-based social business founded by Christian Kroll in 2009. The main reason Ecosia was created was to help in financing planting trees and restoration projects. It is thus known as the “tree planting search engine”.

How does Ecosia work? Ecosia is a Bing partner, meaning that Bing powers its search results. Ecosia makes money to support the planning of trees by displaying ads in their search results. Every time an ad is clicked, Ecosia gets a small share. It is estimated that it takes approximately 45 searches to finance planting one tree.

In terms of search engine market share, Ecosia’s share is around 0.10%.

According to Ecosia, 20 million people use their search engine, and their initiative led to planting more than 180 million trees. Their monthly income according to their financial reports is $4 million.

9. AOL.com

AOL

The famous old-time AOL is still in the top 10 search engines, with a market share of nearly 0.05%.

The AOL network includes many popular websites like engadget.com, techchrunch.com, and huffingtonpost.com. On June 23, 2015, AOL was acquired by Verizon Communications.

On May 3, 2021, AOL was sold to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion (the same company owning Yahoo) and became part of the new Yahoo! Inc.

Regarding traffic, AOL receives 339 million visits per month, making it one of the top 30 visited websites in the United States.

10. Internet Archive

Archive.org

Internet Archive is a non-profit search engine you can use to find websites, free books, movies, software, and more.

Its index consists of 845B websites, 39M books, 11M movies, and many other online resources.

One of the most popular features of Internet Archive is the WayBackMachine. You can use it to find out how a web site looked since 1996. It is a very useful tool if you want to trace the history of a domain and examine how it has changed over the years.

Search Engine Market Share

Here is a breakdown of desktop and mobile global search engine market share (January 2024). Google dominates the market with more than 80% on desktop and 95% on mobile.

Search EngineDesktopMobile
Google81.74%95.49%
Bing10.52%0.53%
Yahoo2.8%0.48%
Yandex2.35%1.39%
DuckDuckGo0.84%0.44%
Baidu0.84%1.03%

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