Which are the 10 best and most popular search engines in the World? It may be a shocking surprise for many, but Google is not the only search engine available on the Internet today!
Besides Google and Bing, other search engines may not be as well known, but they still serve millions of search queries daily.
In fact, several alternative search engines want to take Google's throne, but none is ready (yet) to pose a threat. Google is the most popular search engine, with an amazing 90.01% market share compared to 3.95% of second-place Bing.
Nevertheless, other search engines are 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 2024, ranked by popularity.
1. Google
There is no need for further introductions. Google holds first place in search with a stunning difference of 86.06% from second place Bing. Google first launched 26 years ago (1998) and quickly became the top search engine because of its ability to deliver accurate answers to users' queries in the fastest way possible.
According to statistics from Statista and Statcounter, Google dominates the market in all countries on any device (desktop, mobile, and tablet). In particular, Google's desktop market share is 79.6%, and the mobile market share is 94.21%.
Why is Google the most popular search engine?
The quality of its search results has made Google the most popular and trusted search engine. Google uses 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 AI and machine learning) and still remains the most reliable way to find exactly what you are looking for on the Internet.
Google handles over 8.5 billion searches daily, and its index holds hundreds of terabytes of information.
As you can see in the graph below, Google's market share has been consistently over 90% for the last decade.
2. Microsoft Bing
The best alternative search engine to Google is Microsoft Bing. Over the years, Bing’s search engine share has ranged between 2.92% and 3.43%.
Bing is Microsoft’s attempt to challenge Google in search, but despite its efforts, it still has not convinced users that its search engine can be as reliable as Google's.
Their search engine market share is constantly low even though Bing is the default search engine on Windows PCs.
In 2023, Bing was faster than Google in releasing an AI chatbot service (Bing Chat—later named Copilot) based on the popular GPT4, but despite users' initial acceptance, their market share remained at low levels.
Bing originated from Microsoft's previous search engines (MSN Search, Windows Live Search, Live Search), and according to Wikipedia, it is the #26 most visited website on the Internet.
Here is how Bing's market share changed over the last 10 years.
3. Yahoo
Yahoo is one of the most popular email providers, and its web search engine holds third place in search with an average market share of 1.24%.
From October 2011 to October 2015, Yahoo search was exclusively powered by Bing. In October 2015, Yahoo agreed with Google to provide search-related services, and until October 2018, Yahoo's results were powered by Google.
As of October 2019, Yahoo! Search has once again been provided exclusively by Microsoft 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).
Yahoo's pick market share was in 2015 with 4.19%, but since then, it's steadily declining year by year.
4. Baidu
Baidu has a global market share of around 0.81%.
Baidu was founded in 2000 and is China's most popular search engine. Its market share is increasing steadily, and according to Wikipedia, Baidu serves billions of search queries per month. It is currently ranked 6 in the Wikipedia Website Rankings.
Although Baidu is accessible worldwide, it is only available in Chinese.
Besides search services, Baidu offers other products for the Chinese audience, like Baidu Maps and Baidu Baike (similar to Wikipedia). For many, Baidu is called the "Google" of China.
5. Yandex
Yandex, Russia's most popular search engine, has a global market share of around 2.34%
According to Wikipedia, Yandex.ru is one of the 10 most popular websites on the Internet, ranking 8 in Russia.
Yandex presents itself as a technology company that builds intelligent products and services powered by machine learning.
According to Wikipedia, Yandex is the largest search engine in Russia, with a market share of about 65%.
6. DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo’s search engine market share is around 0.65%.
According to DuckDuckGo traffic stats, they serve more than 3 billion searches per month (compared to Google's 8.5 billion searches per day), but their overall market share is constantly below 0.69%.
Unlike what most people believe, DuckDuckGo does not have a search index of its own (like Google and Bing), but it generates 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 major limitation compared to Google, which uses algorithms to determine the best results from all the websites available on the Internet.
On the positive side, DuckDuck Go has a clean interface, does not track users, and is not fully loaded with ads.
You can use DuckDuckGo through any browser, as a browser extension, or download their dedicated browser app from the App Store and Google Play.
As shown below, DuckDuckGo's best year was 2022, with a 0.69% market share, but it has been dropping since then.
7. Ask.com
Formerly known as Ask Jeeves, Ask.com receives approximately 0.42% of the search engine market share. ASK is based on a question/answer format where other users answer most questions or participate in polls.
It also has general search functionality, but compared to Google, Bing, and Yahoo, the results returned are of lower quality.
According to SimilarWeb, Ask.com receives around 36 million visits per month.
8. Ecosia
Ecosia is a Berlin-based social business founded by Christian Kroll in 2009. Its main purpose is to help finance tree planting and restoration projects. Thus, Ecosia is known as the "tree planting search engine."
How does Ecosia work? Ecosia is a Bing partner, meaning that Bing powers its search results. Ecosia makes money to support the planning of trees by displaying ads in their search results. Every time an ad is clicked, Ecosia gets a small share. It is estimated that it takes approximately 45 searches to finance planting one tree.
Regarding search engine market share, Ecosia's share is around 0.10%.
According to Ecosia, 20 million people use its search engine, and its initiative has planted more than 180 million trees. According to its financial reports, its monthly income is $4 million.
9. AOL.com
The famous old-time AOL is still in the top 10 search engines, with a market share of nearly 0.05%.
The AOL network includes many popular websites, such as engadget.com, techchrunch.com, and huffingtonpost.com. On June 23, 2015, Verizon Communications acquired AOL.
On May 3, 2021, AOL was sold to Apollo Global Management for $5 billion (the same company owning Yahoo) and became part of the new Yahoo! Inc.
Regarding traffic, AOL receives 339 million visits per month, making it one of the top 30 visited websites in the United States.
10. Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit search engine that offers access to websites, free books, movies, software, and more.
Its index includes 845 billion websites, 39 million books, 11 million movies, and many other online resources.
One of the Internet Archive's most popular features is the WayBackMachine. It can be used to find out how a website has looked since 1996. It is a very useful tool if you want to trace the history of a domain and examine how it has changed over the years.
Search Engine Market Share
Here is a breakdown of desktop and mobile global search engine market share (October 2024). Google dominates the market, with over 79% on desktop and 94% on mobile.
| Search Engine | Desktop | Mobile |
|---|---|---|
| 79.6% | 94.21% | |
| Bing | 11.78% | 0.75% |
| Yahoo | 3.16% | 0.63% |
| Yandex | 2.66% | 2.22% |
| DuckDuckGo | 0.84% | 0.57% |
| Baidu | 0.71% | 0.87% |
Other Search Engines Worth Considering
StartPage
StartPage was founded in 2006 in the Netherlands. It advertises itself as the world's most private search engine. Startpage protects users' privacy by not allowing tracking systems to record their searches.
When performing a search query in Startpage, you can select a specific region for the results, set the family filter, and configure several other settings without logging in.
Wiki
Wiki.com is a dedicated search engine for wikis. You can select between all wikis, Wikipedia only, encyclopedias, or wikis submitted by other people.
Google powers the wiki results, and they are limited to wikis. If you want to find something specific in Wikipedia or other popular wikis, you can do it faster through wiki.
YouTube
YouTube is the most popular video platform and the second most popular search engine globally. YouTube has more than 2.3 billion active users worldwide.
Many of these users turn to YouTube first when looking for answers or information on the web and not to any other search engine. It is estimated that YouTube processes more than 3 billion searches a month.
Wolframalpha
WolframAlpha is different than all the other search engines. They market it as a Computational Knowledge Engine that can give you facts and data for several topics.
It can do all sorts of calculations; for example, if you enter “mortgage 2000” as input, it will calculate your loan amount, interest paid, etc., based on several assumptions.
Openverse
Openverse is a web search engine that allows users to find content they can reuse. All content in their Search index is under Creative Commons licenses.
Currently, only images and audio are included in their index, but they have plans to add open texts and video.
These are the most popular web search engines on the Internet today.
The list is by no means complete, and many more will be created in the future, but as far as the first places are concerned, Google and Bing will hold the lead positions for years to come.
Resources to Learn More about Search Engines
How Search Engines Work - A tutorial on how search engines work (includes animated video). Covers crawling, indexing, and ranking.
What is SEO?- Learn what search engine optimization is and how to optimize your website for search engines.
How to become an SEO Expert - Master the secrets of search engines by becoming an SEO expert.
Digital Marketing Courses - The best courses to learn about the role of search engines in digital marketing.
