Have you ever been searching for something but did not know where to find it? No worries. We have got some popular search engines that you can use to find anything on the Internet. You can use them to follow discussions, news, track your online reputation, and much more! Search engines have become an important part of our daily life, whether it be carrying out research for a new house décor or where is the nearest coffee shop or looking for the best Steak House in the city. Nowadays, people are becoming more and more dependent on search engines to get a reply to their daily queries.
When we think about search engines, the first name that strikes our mind is Google. This search engine has excelled from being just another search engine. It has become pervasive, often used in the form of a transitive verb.
If you want to know anything, just Google it.
With its ever-evolving algorithms, a dominant online advertising platform and personalized user experience, Google has amassed a worldwide share of around 87%.
No one gives better search results than Google. At least that is the perception we all have.
But is it true?
The easy-to-use interface and personalized user experience of Google come at a cost.
It is no secret that the search engine giant lists the browsing habits of its users and shares that info with advertisers and several other interested parties.
If you are reluctant to trade privacy for convenience or have certain search needs, several popular search engines are the best alternatives to Google.
List of Popular Search Engines
Microsoft Bing- One could say that Bing outperforms Google in some respects. For beginners, Bing has a reward program that lets one accumulate points while searching. You can redeem these points at the Microsoft and Windows stores, which is a great perk. The Bing image search GUI is exceptional to its rivals and much more intuitive. Bing carries that similar clean user experience to video, making it the go-to source for video search without a YouTube partiality.
Yahoo- This is one of the popular search engines and email providers that hold third place o search with an average of 1% market share. From October 2011 to October 2015, Yahoo search was driven exclusively by Bing. In October 2015, Yahoo agreed with Google to offer search-related services and until October 2018, the Yahoo results were powered by both Bing and Google. In October 2019, Yahoo! Search is once again offered exclusively by Bing.
It is the default search engine for Firefox browsers in the United States. The web portal of Yahoo is immensely popular and ranks as the 11th most visited website online.
Yandex- This search engine is used by over 45% of Russian Internet users. People of Belarus, Turkey, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan also use this. It is a completely easy-to-use search engine. As a bonus, it provides a suite of some cool tools.
CC Search- This should be your first choice if you are looking for any kind of copyright-free content. This search engine is a perfect option for people who need music for a video, an image for a blog, or anything else without troubling an angry artist following you for tearing off their work. The way this search engine works is simple- it attracts results from platforms like Wikimedia, Flickr, and Soundcloud and shows results termed as Creative Commons material.
Swiss cows- It is a unique option on this list of popular search engines. It is a family-friendly semantic search engine. It also prides itself on respecting the user’s privacy, never collecting, tracking, or storing data. It makes use of artificial intelligence to ascertain the context of a user’s query. Over time, Swiss cows guarantees to answer your queries with surprising precision.
DuckDuckGo- This search engine’s market share is nearly 0.45%. As per DuckDuckGo traffic statistics, they are serving an average of 47 million searches per day but still, their whole market share is frequently under 0.5%. Unlike what most individuals believe, DuckDuckGo does not have a search index of their own, but they create their search results using different sources. In simple words, they do not have their data, but they depend on various other sources like Bing, Yelp, StackOverFlow, and Yahoo to offer answers to user’s questions. This is a big constraint compared to Google that has a certain set of algorithms to find the best results from different sites available online. On the positive side, DuckDuck Go comes with a clean interface. It does not track users and is not loaded with ads.
LinkedIn Answer Search- This search engine is a great way to attain exposure and create authority in your industry. Use the Answers Advanced Search to find the right questions to answer.
Keyhole- This is one of the popular search engines that allow you to search for hashtags, @mentions, keywords, and URLs. Do you want to find out how your recent blog was shared on social media platforms? You need to select URL on Keyhole and put the URL and you will find out who has shared it.
Social Mention- The search engine allows you to search across various types of networks including microblogs, comments, blogs, events, bookmarks, news, events, images, and much more.
StartPage- It serves up answers from Google, making it the right choice for those who prefer Google’s search engine results, but are not keen on having their search history recorded and stored. It also includes a proxy service, a URL generator, and HTTPS support. The URL generator is mainly useful because it reduces the demand to collect cookies. Instead, it remembers your settings in a manner that promotes privacy.
Search Encrypt- It is a private search engine that makes use of local encryption to make sure your searches remain private. It makes use of a mix of encryption methods that include Secure Sockets Layer encryption and AES-256 encryption. When you enter your query, Search Encrypt will pull the answers from its network of search partners and deliver the requested info. One of the unique things about Search Encrypt is that your search terms will ultimately expire, so your information will be kept private even if somebody accesses your computer.
OneSearch- OneSearch was launched by Verizon Media in January 2020. It guarantees:
- No retargeting, cookie tracking, or personal profiling
- No sharing personal info with advertisers
- No storage of user search history
- Unfiltered and unbiased search engine results
- Encrypted search terms
Buzzsumo- Make use of Buzzsumo if you have a certain topic in your mind and want to find out which articles on the internet were most shared for that specific search. There is a paid version that can provide you access to more tools for a specific topic.
Scribd- This is one of the largest social reading and publishing network that lets you find out original written content across the internet. Sort your results by language, category, file types, length, cost, and upload date.
Ecosia- Ecosia is a Berlin-based social business discovered by Christian Kroll in 2009. The main reason why this search engine was created was to assist in financing planting trees and restoration projects. It is, therefore, known as the “tree planting search engine.” In terms of search engine market share, the share of Ecosia is nearly 0.10%.
AOL.com- The old-time legendary AOL is still one of the popular search engines with a market share that is near to 0.05%. The AOL network includes several popular web sites like techchrunch.com, huffingtonpost.com, and engadget.com.