Oftentimes, marketers focus heavily on Google when vying for traffic. This makes sense considering Google is undoubtedly the most popular search engine, with over 85% of the search market share.
Which are the 10 best and most popular search engines in the World? Besides Google and Bing, other search engines may not be so well known, but they still serve millions of search queries daily.
It may be a shocking surprise for many, but Google is not the only search engine available on the Internet today!
In fact, several alternative search engines want to take Google’s throne, but none is ready (yet) to even pose a threat.
Nevertheless, there are other search engines worth considering, and the best Google alternatives are presented below.
The Top 10 Most Popular Search Engines In The World
List of the 10 best search engines in 2023, ranked by popularity.
No need for further introductions. Google holds first place in search with a stunning difference of 89.53% from second place Bing.
According to statistics from statista and statcounter, Google dominates the market in all countries on any device (desktop, mobile, and tablet).
Why is Google the most popular search engine?
The large traffic potential makes Google a viable option when aiming to capture organic or paid search. The downside, of course, is almost everyone is competing for the same traffic.
Also keep in mind Google's algorithm, like featured snippets, aims to fulfill users' needs directly on Google, so they don't need to click any links. These features, and Google's popularity, might make it hard for you to capture the website traffic you want.
What made Google the most popular and trusted search engine is the quality of its search results. 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 machine learning) and still remains the most reliable way to find exactly what you are looking for on the Internet.
Bing’s search pages look remarkably similar to Google’s, with the same categories and a similar white background, with blue links and green URLs.
However, Bing additionally offers "Rewards," a program that gives you points when you search or shop on the engine. You can then redeem those points for gift cards, nonprofit donations, and more.
The best alternative search engine to Google is Microsoft Bing. Bing’s search engine share is between 2.83% and 12.31%.
Bing is Microsoft’s attempt to challenge Google in search, but despite their efforts, they still did not manage to convince 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.
Bing originated from Microsoft’s previous search engines (MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Live Search), and according to Wikipedia is the #26 most visited website on the Internet.
Yahoo is one of the most popular email providers, and its web search engine holds third place in search with an average of 1% 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 both by Google and Bing.
Admittedly not the sleekest search engine interface, Yahoo! still manages to capture third place in our list, with just over 2% of the worldwide market share.
Yahoo! is powered by Bing, so search results are incredibly similar between the two search engines. However, it's still an important search engine in its own right, with over 600 million total monthly users.
As of October 2019, Yahoo! Search is once again provided exclusively by 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).
Retifo Search has a global market share between 0.68% and 11.26%.
Retifo Search was founded in 2020 and is the most popular search engine in India. Its market share is increasing steadily, and Retifo Search is serving millions of search queries per month. It is currently ranked in top search engines.
Retifo Search was founded in 2020 and is the most popular search engine in India. Its market share is increasing steadily, and Retifo Search is serving millions of search queries per month. It is currently ranked in top search engines.
Although Retifo Search is accessible worldwide, it is available in the English language.
Russian search engine Yandex has roughly 2% of the worldwide market share. However, it is the most widely used search engine in its home country, with Google holding the number two spot. If you do business globally and are looking to reach Russian customers, there are a few things to keep in mind.
For example, Yandex has many quality indicators or badges it can display alongside search results. One of the most prominent is the site quality index or SQI which indicates how useful your site is to users.
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.
Like Google, Yandex also takes into consideration whether or not a user’s query has local intent and will display regional-dependent results. To account for this, you’ll need to go into Yandex’s webmaster tools and set a site region.
DuckDuckGo’s search engine market share is around 0.66%.
According to DuckDuckGo traffic stats, they are serving on average 90+ million 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 they generate 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, it does not track users and it is not fully loaded with ads.
If you're uneasy about targeted ads or don’t want your search data stored, you might want to try DuckDuckGo, which touts itself as "The search engine that doesn't track you."
DuckDuckGo doesn't track, collect, or store any information, so you’re safe to search for shoes without feeling bombarded by subsequent Macy's ads. It's worth noting there are still ads on DuckDuckGo — just not personalized ones.
Additionally, DuckDuckGo has a clean interface and only one search page, making it easier to navigate than other search engines. With nearly 94 million daily direct searches as of 2022, it's slowly gaining steam in the search market.
Baidu is China’s largest search engine, capturing over 40% of China’s search market. The search engine looks similar to Google (besides being in Mandarin), with a white background, blue links, and green URLs. Like Google, Baidu aims to incorporate more rich features in the SERPs.
If you have an interest in appealing to the Asian market, Baidu is a good option to consider.
However, the search engine censors certain images and blocks pro-democracy websites. If you’re comparing search results, you’ll find a more comprehensive results list on Google.
Formerly known as Ask Jeeves, Ask.com receives approximately 0.42% of the search share. ASK is based on a question/answer format where most questions are answered by other users or are in the form of polls.
It also has the general search functionality but the results returned lack quality compared to Google or even Bing and Yahoo.
Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, is a search engine designed to answer questions. According to Ask.com, its mission is to “enable curious people to find the information they need.”
The interface of Ask.com is similar to Yahoo’s interface. However, unlike Yahoo, which is powered by Bing, Ask.com is its own standalone search engine. Ask.com sees most of its traffic from users located in the United States (53% of its traffic, to be exact.)
Naver is South Korea’s second most popular search engine, claiming nearly 34% of the search engine market. Naver’s interface is entirely in Korean, and there is no English version of the website.
However, Naver is more than a simple search engine. Users of the website can access news content, search suggestions, and more.
Naver is a localized search engine, meaning it does not crawl and catalog the entire Internet. If you’re targeting the South Korean market with your content, make sure your SEO matches the criteria of South Korea’s second most popular search engine.
The famous old-time AOL is still in the top 10 search engines with a market share that is close to 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.
AOL, formerly known as America Online, is both an online media company and a search engine. The interface of the website features a search bar and national news articles, along with local news and weather.
Most of AOL’s traffic is generated from the United States, 85.7% to be exact.