The 11 most-used search engines, in order of popularity
When trying to get traffic, marketers often put a lot of focus on Google. This makes sense, since Google is by far the most popular search engine, with a market share of over 80%.
But because it is so popular, it is the hardest search engine to do well on. If you ignore other search engines, you’ll miss out on important ways to get traffic.
Here, we’ll look at the 11 biggest search engines in the world so you can talk about other possible traffic sources at your next SEO meeting.
Note: We looked at the market share of desktop and mobile search engines around the world from November 2021 to November 2022 to make our list.
The Best Search Engines
- Bing
- Yahoo!
- Yandex
- DuckDuckGo
- Baidu
- Ask.com
- Naver
- Ecosia
- AOL
- Internet Archive
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Google
Google is the most popular search engine by far. It has more than 80% of the search market share. Google also gets almost 95% of the traffic from mobile devices.
Google is a good choice for organic or paid search because it has a lot of potential traffic. The downside is that almost everyone is trying to get the same visitors.
Also, keep in mind that Google’s algorithm, like featured snippets, tries to meet users’ needs right on Google so they don’t have to click any links. Because of these features and Google’s popularity, it might be hard for you to get the traffic you want to your website.
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Bing
Bing is the biggest competitor to Google, and it gets 15% of all searches in the U.S. This engine also runs Yahoo, which is the third largest search engine in the United States.
Bing’s search pages are a lot like Google’s. They both have the same categories, a white background, blue links, and green URLs.
But Bing also has a programme called “Rewards,” which gives you points when you search or shop on the site. Then, you can turn those points into gift cards, money for charities, and more.
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Yahoo!
Even though Yahoo search!’s interface isn’t the best, it still comes in third on our list, with just under 3% of the worldwide market share.
Yahoo! is powered by Bing, so the search results from the two search engines are very similar. But it’s still a significant search engine, with more than 600 million users per month.
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Yandex
Yandex, a search engine from Russia, has about 2% of the market share around the world. But in its home country, it is the most popular search engine. Google is in second place. There are a few things to keep in mind if you do business around the world and want to reach Russian customers.
Yandex, for example, can show many badges or other signs of quality next to search results. The site quality index, or SQI, is one of the most well-known. It shows how useful your site is to users.
Yandex, like Google, thinks about whether a user’s search has a local focus and shows results based on the user’s location. To account for this, you’ll need to set a site region in Yandex’s webmaster tools.
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DuckDuckGo
If you don’t like targeted ads or don’t want your search history saved, you might want to try DuckDuckGo, which calls itself “The search engine that doesn’t track you.”
DuckDuckGo doesn’t track, collect, or store any information, so you can search for shoes without worrying about Macy’s ads following you around. It’s important to note that DuckDuckGo still has ads, but they are not personalised.
Also, DuckDuckGo is easier to use than other search engines because it has a clean interface and only one search page. As of September 2022, it was slowly gaining ground in the search market, with an average of 94,758,414 direct searches per day.
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Baidu
Baidu is the most popular search engine in China. It has more than 63% of the search market in China. The search engine looks like Google, except that it is in Mandarin. The background is white, the links are blue, and the URLs are green. Baidu wants to add more rich features to the SERPs, just like Google.
Baidu is a good option to think about if you want to reach out to the Asian market.
But the search engine blocks some pro-democracy websites and blocks some images. If you want to compare search results, Google will give you a longer list of results.
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Ask.com
Ask.com, which used to be called Ask Jeeves, is a search engine that helps people find answers to their questions. Ask.com says its goal is to “help curious people find the information they need.”
The way you use Ask.com is similar to how you use Yahoo. But unlike Yahoo, which is run by Bing, Ask.com is its own search engine that doesn’t work with Bing. Most of Ask.com’s traffic comes from people in the United States (51.8% of it, to be exact).
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Naver
Naver is the second most used search engine in South Korea, with 28.81% of the market share. There is no English version of the Naver website, and the interface is only in Korean.
Naver is more than just a search engine, though. Users of the website can look at news stories, get suggestions for their searches, and more.
Naver is a localised search engine, meaning it does not crawl and catalogue the entire Internet. If you want your content to reach people in South Korea, make sure your SEO meets the requirements of South Korea’s second most popular search engine.
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Ecosia
“The search engine that plants trees” is what Ecosia is called. Ecosia will plant a tree in a vulnerable area for every search made on its website or with its free browser extension. This is done with the money the company makes from its searches. Ecosia has paid for 146 million trees so far.
Ecosia is growing in popularity, but it is especially popular in Germany where the company is based. Ecosia now has 0.11% of the search engine market around the world. Ecosia is run by Bing, just like Yahoo!
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AOL
AOL, which used to be called America Online, is both a search engine and an online media company. The website’s main page has a search bar, national news articles, local news, and weather, among other things.
The United States are where 86.38% of AOL’s traffic comes from.
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Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is not like other search engines. As its name implies, Internet Archive is a free archive of books, movies, software, music, websites, etc.
Instead of trying to rank in this search engine as bloggers do for other search engines, users can sign up for a free account and add their content to the archives.
Most people who use Internet Archive are from the United States. But search engine is getting more and more popular in places like India and Great Britain.
Search Engine Trends on the Rise
The biggest search engines may have another competitor vying for user business in the near future, as Arel=”noopener” target=” blank” hrefs have revealed they are working on a search engine of their own.
Yep is different from other platforms because it gives 90% of its ad revenue to the people who make content. With this model, Yep aims to encourage more people to share their knowledge and high-quality content.
Google is also working to prioritise good content with their 2022 Helpful Content Update.
“First of all, Google is sending a clear message that content written by people is better than content written by computers. (Ironic, given virtually all of the SERPs are algorithmized.)”
Frost also says that this update should make SEOs think about site performance in a more complete way.
“This update also reinforces the idea that your domain is one thing, and the content on one part of your website will affect how well another part of your website works,” explains Frost. “With this in mind, SEOs should look at their site as a whole, not as a bunch of separate pages.”
Don’t stop at Google.
In the end, it’s important to think about other ways to get traffic besides Google when making an SEO strategy.
By using a variety of sources, you have a better chance of getting on the first page of SERPs and are more likely to find your ideal target audience.
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