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Top 10 Search Engines in the World

Whether it’s about searching for a home, looking for a new job or learning more about a tech gadget you like, we now heavily rely on search engines in our daily lives. Now available on mobile phones and many other smart devices used in homes, people easily access search engines with just a few taps or voice commands to get the answer to their everyday queries.

When it comes to the term “search engine”, the name Google strikes our minds, it is mainly because it has been a dominant player in the internet and tech industry for years. However, there are other entities running search engines as well. Want to learn more about all the top players of the search engine industry? We’ve got you covered. In this article, we have put together a list of the top 10 search engines in the world.

Google

Owned by Alphabet Inc., which is based in the United States, Google acquires more than 70% of the search engine market and its related industries, which currently makes it the unrivaled king of the global tech sector. It is undoubtedly the best search engine in the world, which is now easily accessible and available on many different types of devices. You can now even scan or take a picture from your smartphone camera and search for the relevant results on Google directly without even accessing your browser.

The tech giant is constantly working on improving its algorithm to make it more user as well as business-friendly and provide the best search results available on the internet. Google has also partnered up with other leading tech companies like Apple and pays them billions of dollars to become their default search engine.

Bing

The next on our list of the 10 best search engines in the world is Bing by Microsoft. Bing was launched in 2009 as the direct competitor to Google. It was surprising that despite the popularity of Windows OS in the world of laptops and PCs, Bing was unable to beat Google. It was the default search engine for Microsoft Internet Explorer, which is now officially dead. If you use Edge, which is now Microsoft’s flagship Internet browser, you would have noticed that Bing is set as the default search engine in it.

Microsoft is doing all possible efforts to make Bing famous and more user-friendly. It wants to give Google a hard time. But, keeping in view the current stats and analytics, Bing still has a long way to go to even come anywhere near Google’s popularity, but who knows what the future has in store for both of these search engines. Similar to what Google is offering, this search engine by Microsoft also lets you use different filters and features to search web results, images, and videos as well as maps

Yahoo

Yahoo was a dominant player in the email market for decades because Gmail got immensely famous due to the growing popularity and number of Android devices. Yahoo has always tried to be successful in the search engine market as well. This US-based tech company still has many people who use its services all over the world. 

Due to its limited scope and scale, Yahoo Search Engine has never been a competitor of Google. In fact, it had asked Google to provide searches for its search features to increase the user experience. Yahoo also reached out to Bing to do the same. For quite a few years, Yahoo’s search results were powered by both Google and Bing. However, the agreement with Google came to an end more than two years ago, and currently, its search engine services are exclusively managed by Bing. 

Baidu

Often known as the Chinese counterpart of Google, Baidu is the most popular search engine in China. Since the services of Google are limited in the country, Baidu enjoys a major market share. One of the key differences between both of these search engines is that Google is more focused on international expansion, whereas Baidu is doing all possible efforts to enhance its services primarily in the Chinese market. 

Baidu also has a mobile app that is very similar to the Google Search app, which we normally use on our smartphones. The Baidu search app has a very easy-to-use and clean interface to ensure a user-friendly experience. However, it is specifically designed for users in China and other regions of the world where Chinese is spoken. 

AOL

AOL is an old-time famous browser, which dominated the internet search engine market long before the popularity of Google. It emerged as a highly popular internet browser and search engine during the 1990s. It was an era when people relied on CDs and different types of modem software to install and run browsers and internet searches on their computers. 

The popularity of AOL has significantly decreased with time. Which was once an eminent player in the tech industry, now only has a very tiny market share. Only because of the popularity associated with the name “AOL,” it has made it to our list of the best internet search engines in the world. AOL was bought by Verizon Communication for billions of dollars. However, a few years later, Verizon sold it to Apollo Global Management in 2021. You can also download the AOL app on your mobile phone to use their mail service, read news stories, and stream videos.

Yandex

Yandex is also a very well-known name in the global tech industry for decades. Based in Russia, it is the biggest search engine in the country, which also extends its services to audiences all around the world. Yandex was launched in 1997, which also makes it one of the oldest search engines in the world. Along with Russia, Yandex is also a very popular search engine in many different Central Asian and European countries, which include Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, and Turkey.

To stay as much relevant in the tech industry as possible, Yandex also offers many other services, such as Yandex Music, Yandex Maps, Yandex Money, and even an online translator among many other features. Yandex is not only one of the world’s most famous search engines. It also has its very own web browser, which is freeware, like many other famous internet browsers in today’s world. 

Ecosia

As the name suggests — Ecosia — a search engine that is headquartered in Germany supports non-profit organizations around the world that are making efforts for reforestation and the conservation of natural environments. It was an unprecedented initiative that was appreciated by the global community. When Ecosia was launched, the search engine was providing a combination of Yahoo, Bing, and Wikipedia search results.

However, after 2017, all the search results on Ecosia are provided by Bing, which is owned by Microsoft. This is also one of the key reasons why you get special support and extension for Ecoasia on the Microsoft Edge browser. The efforts of Ecosia to save the greenery of the planet can never be undermined. It donates a large portion of its earnings to financially back the campaigns and initiatives centered around reforestation and green solutions.

Ask.com

A search engine with probably the most interesting and relevant name on the internet, Ask.com was founded in 1995, which also makes it a decades-old player in the tech industry. When it was launched, it was a very basic search engine, centered around the concept of question + answer in a simple web format. However, with the advancement of technology and the evolution of gadgets, the platform started offering many other services, such as news, trending articles on culture, entertainment, and travel.

The user interface of this search engine is also very simple and easy to use. It is important to mention here that Ask.com only provides you with web results. If you want to search for photos and videos, you may have to redirect yourself to other websites. Ask.com greatly relies on its own algorithms to provide users with relevant search results. However, it also uses third-party services, if it doesn’t have the results you’re looking for.

Excite.com

You may have heard rarely about Excite but it is also one of the top search engines in the world. It was launched as a web portal in 1994, mainly to sell different types of event and venue tickets. As of now, Excite has not only transformed into an internet search engine but also offers many other types of services and features on its website like weather updates, news, and instant messaging. 

This internet company was acquired by Ask.com in 2004, which wanted to turn it into a web portal with advanced features. There was a time when Google was offered to the CEO of Excite.com for under $100 million but the offer was turned down. 

Now Google is worth hundreds of billions of dollars and Excite is barely known by anyone. Now, this web portal is owned by IAC, an American holding company. It is the same company that also owns Ask.com.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a pretty fancy and unique name for a web search engine, unlike anything you may have heard before. However, the most unique feature of this internet search engine is that it protects the privacy of users. The company doesn’t sell off your information to third parties for marketing purposes like other tech giants do these days. You can easily conduct searches on DuckDuckGo while staying completely anonymous. 

DuckDuckGo doesn’t even collect information from cookies or uses IP addresses to fetch the location information of users. It is specifically made for those people who want to browse the internet without compromising on their personal information and other related details. Along with a web search engine, DuckDuckGo also has a mobile website browser available on both iOS and Android platforms. 

This brings us to the end of our list of the top 10 search engines in the world. Each of them has its own way of filtering results and content. You can use any of them according to your preferences. We hope this article has given you all the relevant information that you were looking for about the most advanced and top-performing search engines on the internet these days.

What do you think?

Written by Spencer K