For many of us, “search engine” means Google. Even for some, the concept of “Internet” is the same as the Google search page.
Today, using search engines has become a major part of our daily lives. We ask almost all the questions that come to us during the day from search engines and we can get a lot of information in a few seconds with a single search. It is clear that Google is the most popular search engine in the world. However, Google is not the only search engine in the world. There are many search engines to choose from. It is better to say that there are different types of search engines, of which Google is only one example.
In this article, we want to first introduce you to the types of search engines and then introduce the most popular search engines in the world.
Table of Contents
What is a search engine?
A search engine is a web-based software that is designed for the user to search the Internet on the World Wide Web based on a set of rules. This set of rules is called a search engine algorithm, which is used to display website pages on the search engine results page (SERP).
To put it simply, search engines help us to find the most relevant information by examining different types of information available on the Internet.
Types of search engines
In slang, when we say “search engine”, most people think of text search just like the common Google search. However, as technology advances, we see more types of search engines and search engine algorithms emerging.
In fact, everything you search on is a search engine that doesn’t necessarily have the same algorithm as text search engines.
There are different types of search engines, and we have mentioned only a few common examples in this section:
- Search engines based on search engine crawlers
- Map-based search engines
- Multimedia search engines
- Voice search engines
Crawler based search engines
Crawler-based search engines use algorithms or software programs to find and categorize websites and web pages. Hence, they are called “reptiles” or “spiders” or “robots”.
These types of search engines crawl the pages of websites and index them. When a user searches for a term, the search engine displays the most relevant websites among the pages it has already indexed.
The most famous examples of crawler-based search engines are: Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
Map-based search engines
Map-based search engines help users find different places on the map. These search engines usually use user-submitted data, algorithmic prioritization, location, satellites, comments from other users, etc. to display the most relevant results to users. Google Maps, Apple Maps, and Waze are among the most famous map search engines.
Multimedia search engines
Multimedia search engines provide the possibility to search for multimedia files using search terms. Since computers are always learning how to understand images, we can add additional layers of data to our multimedia files to help search engines understand and classify this data.
This additional data is called Metadata, which can include things like additional text descriptions, links to other related content, or even the use of Markup Language that tells search engines exactly what this multimedia file is.
Examples of multimedia search engines include Google images, Google video, FindSounds, Picserach, YouTube, Veveo.
Voice search engines
Voice search allows us to talk to devices like other humans and get answers and feedback in return. Examples of popular and widely used voice search engines are:
- Amazon Alexa
- Google Home
- Apple’s Siri
Introducing the most popular search engines
Google search engine
Google search engine is the best search engine in the world and also one of the most popular products of Google Company. According to Alexa, google.com is the most visited site on the entire web. Google’s goal is to provide the most useful and relevant search results to users, that’s why this technology giant is always trying to provide the best results and user experience to end users by improving the search engine algorithm.
Bing search engine
The Bing search engine, owned by Microsoft, was launched in 2009. This search engine has a market share of 96.2% and attracts more than 1 billion visitors per month. Although Bing is not as big as Google, it has certain features that make it relatively competitive.
For example, Bing Image Search is known for displaying high-quality, clear images. In addition, the Bing search engine allows users to filter the images they want based on different layouts, such as tall, wide, or square images.
Bing’s video search results display, presented as a grid of thumbnails, is also very interesting.
In addition, Bing has designed a rewards program to attract more users and motivate them. This program gives users points while searching, which can be used in various stores, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks stores.
Yahoo search engine
Yahoo is a famous search engine and email service provider, and its search engine ranks third in terms of market share with an average of 1.5%. Bing and Yahoo are the fiercest competitors in the search engine market. Of course, Yahoo’s results are supported by the Bing search engine. For this reason, the results of these two search engines are very similar to each other.
Baidu search engine
Baidu is the fourth largest search engine in the world with a market share of 17.1%. It is also the most popular search engine in China, accessed by approximately 86% of Chinese internet users.
Baidu derives a large portion of its revenue from online marketing services, which makes Baidu a powerful search engine for businesses targeting the Chinese market.
Yandex search engine
Yandex was the fifth most used search engine in the world and the most popular search engine in Russia with a market share of 65% in this country. Globally, Yandex has a market share of 1.06%.
In addition to being a search engine, Yandex also offers services such as live traffic maps, online translation, music, and more. Yandex search engine has a special search engine technology that allows users to use an image instead of words in the search section. Yandex is also known as one of the best search engines for face matching and location recognition.
DuckDuckGo search engine
DuckduckGo is the sixth top search engine with the fastest growing market share. With about 80 million users, the DuckDuckGo search engine has a global market share of 0.68%, with more than half of its searches coming from the United States. Also, the DuckDuckGo browser has more than 10 million downloads from the Google Play store and thus has proven its popularity among Android users.
One of the strengths of this search engine compared to other search engines and even Google is data privacy. This search engine claims that it does not collect any of the users’ personal information and does not sell it to other companies.
Ask search engine
Ask.com search engine is the seventh largest search engine in the world with a global market share of 0.72% and 6% in the US market.
Ask.com is a popular question and answer search engine that receives 13 million queries per day. Users of the Ask search engine are very diverse, from kids looking for homework answers to professional photographers looking for high-quality images, to university researchers.