This guide will introduce you to some of the most popular search engines globally and help you understand which companies have the most dominance on the Internet.
Below you will find the 10 most popular search engines listed:
Google
Google comes first in this list of the top 10 search engines because it has the most significant share of the search engine market (taking about 92.01% since June 2021).
A brief history
In 1997 Google was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and with time, it has turned into one of the most profitable companies in the world. As you all know, Google is a viral search engine, and nowadays, it has become an integral part of users’ experience. According to some statistical reports, Google rearranges its search algorithm about 500-600 times per year. Not to mention the accurate analytics of Google and the fact that it has the highest number of websites in its index lists, making Google a hard-to-beat search engine that provides precise and detailed results to the end-user.
Link: https://www.google.com
Bing
The Microsoft-owned search engine, Bing (launched in 2009), commands 2.96% of the market share and attracts over 1 billion visits per month. Bing’s image search is well-known for showcasing sharp and high-quality images. Not only that, but Bing’s image search also allows users to filter images according to distinct image layouts (tall, square, or wide). To add more, Bing’s display of video search results presented as a grid of thumbnails is also phenomenal. Bing has many features that make it reasonably competitive to the search engine market.
Link: https://www.bing.com
Yahoo
Yahoo is positioned on the 3-rd place in the top-ten search engines in the world. Powered by Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo is one of the oldest search engines and email services (launched in 1995). As we are speaking, Yahoo has a market share of about 1.51%, and it is more considered an internet portal rather than a search engine. Nevertheless, it is interesting to know that Yahoo can beat Google when it comes to the best way to provide a vast suggestion of trending items and search suggestions (beyond any user’s expectation).
Link: https://www.yahoo.com
Baidu
Positioned as the fourth most significant search engine globally, Baidu commands 1.17% of the market share. Baidu is the most modern search engine in China, and almost 86% of internet users in this country access it. Moreover, a massive chunk of its revenue comes from online marketing services, making Baidu a powerful search engine for businesses aiming at the Chinese market.
Link: https://www.baidu.com
Yandex
Yandex is known as the fifth most used search engine globally, especially in Russia, and has a market share of 65% in the country. Yandex keeps a market share of 1.06% worldwide, and its popularity overlaps with Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and other Eastern European countries.
Despite being a search engine, Yandex also provides a wide range of services like live traffic maps, music, online translations, and Yandex money. Plus, this search engine technology allows users to input an image as the query (instead of words). Yandex ranks impressively high as it is one of the best search engines for face matching and location identification.
Link: https://yandex.com
DuckDuckGo
Listed as the sixth-best search engine globally, DuckDuckGo is known for its fastest market share growth. Within a year (January 2020-January 2021), DuckDuckGo has grown its daily search volume average to about 73%. This is a massive increase in market share since 2008 when first launched this search engine.
DuckDuckGo has a 0.68% market share, and more than half of this search engine’s queries come from the US. With about 80 million global users and 10 million downloads from the Google play store, DuckDuckGo proves its popularity among Android users once more.
It is essential to know that DuckDuckGo is distinguished from other search engines for its strong advocacy for data privacy. In DuckDuckGo, your searches remain strictly private and safely protected from data queries and targeted advertising.
Link: https://duckduckgo.com
Ask.com
As you have now discovered, Ask.com is the seventh-largest search engine globally and has a global market share of 0.72% (and 6% in the US market). This search engine is famous for questions and answers as it receives about 13 million queries in one day. Ask.com has different types of users, from kids that seek homework answers, university scholars making academic inquiries, professional photographers seeking crisp images, to millennials looking for the next movie.
Link: https://www.ask.com
Naver
Launched in 1999, Naver currently has a 0.13% of global market share, and it’s why Google can not entirely dominate the South Korean search engine market. Naver’s most vital selling point is its well-categorized and web portal-like interface. However, Naver is a better search engine because of its simplicity and single access point to a wide range of web services like music, dictionaries, and news.
Naver also uses a “comprehensive search service,” which allows users to get different results from a search query on a single page. For example, when a person searches for the latest news about startup technology, Naver collects the most relevant news articles from primary domestic/international sources and displays them on a single page.
Link: https://www.naver.com
AOL
AOL, which is short for American Online, is an American web portal and online service provider located in New York City with a global market share of 0.06%. American Online was founded in the mid-1980s and was the way most people with a dial-up modem connected to the web. AOL was primary in the internet space, and in 1995 this search engine counted about 3 million active customers and was the most recognized brand on the web in the US.
Another thing to know about AOL is that it runs its search engine site (AOL search engine) that provides access to local search results, web, image, news, and online shopping.
Link: https://search.aol.com
Seznam
To complete the top 10 list of search engines in the world, we have Seznam with a market share of 0.05%. Seznam is one of the best search engines in the Czech Republic that attracts millions of users within the country. Launched in 1996 by Ivo Lukačovič, Seznamwas the first search engine in the Czech Republic. From being a simple search engine, Seznam has become an online service provider with a reliable portal of financial, political & social news, sports, weather forecasts, etc.
Link: https://search.seznam.cz/
Top 10 most popular search engines
| Ranking | Search Engine | Market Share |
| 1 | 92.01% | |
| 2 | Bing | 2.96% |
| 3 | Yahoo | 1.51% |
| 4 | Baidu | 1.17% |
| 5 | Yandex | 1.06% |
| 6 | DuckDuckGo | 0.68% |
| 7 | Ask.com | 0.42% |
| 8 | Naver | 0.13% |
| 9 | AOL | 0.06% |
| 10 | Seznam | 0.05% |
As you discovered in this article, the top 10 most popular search engines consist of more than 99% of the global market share.
