Are you looking for a more private or a search experience that is free of advertisements? In this piece, we’ll go through 20 search engines that you may use in alternative to Google to get information.
Google is much more than a simple search engine. It is the go-to search engine for many individuals for everything from simple queries to product research and keeping up to speed on the most recent news.
Google is also the most crucial search engine for SEO and marketing specialists, as it is for the general public. With a market share of more than 90 percent, it’s difficult to argue that any other search engine provides better results than Google’s algorithm.
At the very least, this is the general consensus. There is a cost to Google’s easy-to-use design and tailored user experience. In order to provide you with the best experience possible, Google records your behaviour across various services, including your search queries, the websites you browse, and much more.
Although it is not well known, the search engine giant collects the surfing behaviour of its users and distributes that information with marketers and other parties that may find the information helpful.
If you are hesitant to compromise privacy for convenience or special search requirements, there are a variety of Google options that provide a more satisfying search experience than Google.
What is the process through which search engines act?
Search engines are used for three primary purposes:
Crawl: They look for material on each URL they come across on the Internet.
Index: Indexing is the act of storing and organising the stuff that has been discovered during the crawling process.
Rank: Display material that will most effectively answer a searcher’s query, with the most relevant
information appearing first and the least pertinent content appearing last.
Here are 20 search engine alternatives for Google to consider
Google is the most popular search engine in the world, while Bing is the second most popular search engine (at least in 2020).
When you understand that it only holds 2.39 percent of the total market share, the excitement around it quickly fades away. The result is that Bing’s market share will be difficult to overtake when compared to Google’s (92%).
When it comes to Bing, Microsoft is the company in charge. Because of Microsoft’s clever mixing and matching, the search engine is what you see on the left. When MSN was launched in 1998, it was Microsoft’s first foray into the search engine space.
Like some other search engines that Google’s competitors have wiped out, MSN has failed to attract the target market’s attention. As a result of Microsoft’s acquisition of several search engines, such as Inktomi, Looksmart, and AltaVista, it was the technology developed from these acquisitions that enabled MSN to catch up.
If Microsoft understood they were on to a treasure trove with miles of exploration ahead of them, they were never prepared to quit up. MSN was renamed Live Search by Microsoft in 2006.
Although they attempted to make it the leading search engine for their renowned browser Internet Explorer (now Edge), people were never satisfied with their choice. People used to do one of the first things they did after purchasing a computer: change the default search engine to Google.
Bing became the official name of Google’s Live Search after a lengthy transition period. Yahoo engaged Bing with a proposal to share its search platform, which was accepted in 2012.
Bing has a rich history, and it is now one of the most robust search engines available, capable of competing against Google’s megalomania – in other words, it is a genuine Google competitor.
The search engine results page (SERP) provided by Bing is utterly different from the one provided by Google since Bing employs its own algorithm for crawls and index reasons. Apart from that, Bing’s homepage is significantly more visually appealing, with dynamic background graphics, as opposed to the basic white background images provided by Google.
Is it true that people are genuinely concerned about this?
However, there are a few instances where Bing outperforms Google when it comes to SERP features.
Local Search Results: Bing’s local search results are highly configurable and visually appealing. A simple search for “restaurants near me” yields a plethora of results that may be filtered. Besides that, the Bing Mobile app has the 360 function, which allows you to discover nearby businesses by utilising your camera.
Image Search: Bing Image Search is far more powerful and structured than the image search options available on Google. It delivers a great deal of information to users, as well as several alternatives for filtering photographs.
Video Search: It’s worth noting that the majority of the videos that appear on Bing come from YouTube, which Google currently owns. In terms of presentation, Bing is a notch above Google in terms of video presentation. The videos search results are shown in thumbnail panels, and viewers can watch videos directly from the search results page.
Links vs. Content: It was well-known that Bing algorithms are more concerned with identifying and displaying high-quality content than they are with counting the number of links. Bing prefers to promote sites with a small number of high-quality links if the content on the site is of high quality.
According to current data, these characteristics have assisted Bing in gaining a more considerable proportion of the US search market. According to Oberlo, Bing has a 6.11 percent market share in the United States search industry, which indicates that the Microsoft-owned search engine is making consistent development.
Bing has a 2.73 percent share of the market.
Searching for a different point of view from outside of the U. S.? Yandex is utilised by more than 45 percent of Russian Internet users, according to data from the company.
It is also widely utilised in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, among other places. Yandex is a search engine that is generally simple to use. An extra plus is a fact that it has a collection of some very amazing tools.
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CC Search
On the lookout for practically any form of copyright-free content, CC Search should be your first visit to the internet.
You may use our search engine to find songs for a video, an image for a blog article, or anything else you need without having to worry about a furious artist coming after you for stealing their work.
In its most basic form, CC Search gathers results from several sites such as Soundcloud, Wikimedia, and Flickr before displaying those that have been tagged as Creative Commons material.
Yahoo! Search, the former search powerhouse, has not given up on the fight to become one of the most significant search engines. According to the company, its market share had decreased from 36.7 percent in 2001 to 1.63 percent in 2020.
This implies that Yahoo is now served by Bing, which means that the search engine displays the same results as Bing on the same page. It will be difficult for Yahoo to make a return.
The fact that Yahoo was the very first search engine to be inspired by and envisage the possibilities of search is vital to remember. Yahoo functioned more like a search directory during its early days, requiring users to enter the information they sought manually.
In 2001, Yahoo contacted Inktomi about sharing its searchable index, and subsequently, Google asked Inktomi in 2002 about sharing its searchable index.
Interestingly, Yahoo didn’t have its own index until it bought Overture Services, Inc. in 2003, which was in charge of both the AlltheWeb and AltaVista search engines. In addition, Yahoo was employing the Google Search Platform until 2003, when it realised that the latter was becoming a significant threat.
Yahoo made an unsuccessful effort to acquire Google in 2002. There was, however, internal debate over the cost of the buyout, which was $1.1 million in this instance.
By the time the red tape was resolved, the value of Google had skyrocketed to $3 billion, making it the most significant squandered opportunity of the twenty-first century. To be quite honest, Yahoo! appears to have given up on its goal of being the Google alternate search engine.
Now, Yahoo has only a 1.47 percent market share.
Baidu, which was founded in China by Robin Li, has many characteristics with Google.
Chinese consumers prefer Baidu over Google because the government has imposed an indefinite ban on all Google services, known as the Great Firewall, which makes it difficult to access the internet.
The current lion’s market share in China is held by Baidu, which outperforms Google as well as other Chinese search engines such as Sogou and Shenma by an incredible 63.56 percent. Alibaba, on the other hand, is engaged in fierce competition with Baidu for the product-related search market.
In 1996, Robin Li created RankDex, a search engine that employed an algorithm that was similar to Google’s PageRank and was the first of its kind. It should be noted that Larry Page obtained the license for the PageRank algorithm two years after Li had implemented the notion in RankDex, indicating that the technique was a success.
Larry had even acknowledged Li in his trademark, indicating that the genuine invention had originated with Li and had been meticulously replicated by Google to perfection. Baidu has been following in the footsteps of Google, not only in terms of the philosophy of offering high-quality search results but also in terms of the services and features that are important to consumers.
Baidu, like Google, features a basic design on its homepage. Unlike Google, however, which began selling advertising space as early as 2004, Baidu began selling advertising space as early as 2004. In contrast to this, Baidu is involved in artificial intelligence and voice-assisted search.
Because of the popularity of Baidu’s DuerOS voice assistant, the company currently executes an average of 3.26 billion voice searches each month as of 2019. It also boasts 1.1 billion worldwide mobile users, and Baidu is used by more than 90 percent of online users, according to the company.
According to the most recent statistics, Baidu maintains 174 million daily users and already has established itself as a Google rival in China. Baidu has a 1.08 percent market share.
A unique choice on our list, Swisscows bills itself as a “family-friendly semantic search engine,” which it claims to be. They also take great satisfaction in protecting their users’ privacy, never collecting, keeping, or monitoring any data about them.
In order to identify the content of a user’s question, it makes use of artificial intelligence. Swisscows claims to answer your queries with astonishing precision over the course of time.
DuckDuckGo is the search engine you should use if you are worried about the privacy of your information. DuckDuckGo is a search engine that was founded in 2008 by Gabriel Weinberg to benefit the public good.
DuckDuckGo’s USP is the reverse of Google’s, which emphasises the individualised search performance as its selling point.
It is well known that Google provides a tailored search performance at the expense of collecting and using your personal information. DuckDuckGo, on the other hand, does not operate in this manner.
Due to the fact that it does not gather your personal information, the search results stay the same for both you and your friends. As stated by the company’s official website, the search results supplied by DuckDuckGo are derived from 400 various sources (algorithms), including Yahoo! Search, Bing, Yandex, Wikipedia, and its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot), among others.
In November 2019, DuckDuckGo crossed the threshold of 50 million searches per day, and as of January 2020, the search engine is getting an average of 51,958,066 requests per day.
The approach of DuckDuckGo is evolving reminds us of Google’s modest origins, which we find comforting. DuckDuckGo has 86 people at the moment, and they are more concerned with providing consumers with organic results than with serving them targeted adverts.
DuckDuckGo will have a 0.5 percent share of the worldwide search industry by 2020, according to the company. But when it comes to overall market share, DuckDuckGo has succeeded in getting a 0.49 percent piece of the global market.
The StartPage private search engine, created in 2006, is yet another private search engine that provides users with a totally private browsing experience by not allowing corporations to harvest your personal information or allowing cookies to interfere with your browsing activity.
This browser’s “Anonymous view” function allows you to remain entirely anonymous while conducting your search activity. Startpage search is owned and operated privately by Startpage BV, and it is considered to be one of the most significant search engines for privacy.
It also comes with a URL generator, a proxy service, and HTTPS support, among other features. Due to the fact that it does not need the collection of cookies, the URL generator is very beneficial.
Instead, it retains your preferences in a manner that protects your personal information.
According to the European Union, the browser’s headquarters are in Europe, a region where privacy rules are one of the most rigorous in the world.
Search Encrypt is a confidentiality search engine that lets users explore the web without having to worry about their personal information being compromised in the process. This private search engine was developed in 2016 by a group of developers who became aware of how large search engines collect personal details and browser details about their users and saw they ought to develop a private search engine of their own.
Local encryption is used by the browser to give an additional degree of security. This is accomplished by sending the search phrases entered by the consumers to the browser’s servers in encrypted form, which are then decrypted and routed through the private search engine of the user’s choosing.
Yandex is the Russian equivalent of Google, and when it comes to age, Yandex is far older than Google. The idea for a web search engine software was conceived by the Yandex founders, Arkady Volozh and Arkady Borkovsky, in 1993, and the company was founded in 1994.
They called it Yet Another Indexer, but it was subsequently renamed Yandex after the Russian word for “search engine”. According to historical records, Yandex was also the first search engine to be commercialised by the sale of advertisements.
According to the company, they were two years ahead of Google when they began displaying contextual adverts on search engine results pages in 1998. The Russian search engine Yandex is in a tight race with its American equivalent Google for market dominance in the United States.
Google and Yandex have about identical market shares in Russia, with Google having a little higher market share. Until July of this year, Yandex held a significant lead over Google in Russia. In recent years, though, the tendency has begun to shift, with Google gaining the upper hand.
Today, Google has a 50.6 percent share of the search market, whereas Yandex has a 46.83 percent stake in the market. Yandex was perhaps the most prominent search engine in Russia until 2006 when Google surpassed it.
Since Google made the decision to enter the Russian search sector, Yandex has been subjected to fierce rivalry. Other opponents, such as the Mail.Ru search engine, have been almost eliminated as a result of the fight between the two behemoths.
Yandex has a 0.44 percent market share.
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Ask
Ask.com is a search engine that is centred on question-answering and was founded in 1996. Garret Gruener and David Warthen were the men that created the company. Prior to 2006, the site was set up as Ask Jeeves, but the name was changed to Ask.com in 2007.
Located in Oakland, California, Ask.com is a search engine and community. In contrast to other search engines, Ask.com allows visitors to get a sample of a website page before they choose to visit it. Ask.com is presently owned by InterActiveCorp (IAC), which trades on the NASDAQ under the ticker name IAC.
As stated on their website, “Gibiru is the most popular search engine among patriots. Because their search results are derived from a customised Google algorithm, they believe users may search the data they need without having to fear Google monitoring their movements and identifying them.
In part, this is due to the fact that Gibiru does not install trackers on your computer, making it purportedly speedier than “NSA Search Engines.
In January 2020, Verizon Media unveiled OneSearch, a search engine that prioritises privacy over everything else. It makes the following promises:
- There will be no tracking cookies, remarketing, or individual profiling.
- There will be no exchange of private details with advertising.
- There is no saving of the user’s search history.
- Unbiased and unfiltered search results are returned.
- Search phrases that have been encrypted.
Naver is a South Korean internet portal that launched its very own search engine in 1999, which is still in use today. When it comes to sophisticated search capabilities, Naver was the first operator in the world to implement them, such as collecting search results from several categories and showing them on a single page.
Over the years, Naver has added a number of new services, ranging from media and emailing to a Q&A platform. Naver is commonly referred to as ‘the Google of South Korea’ because of its popularity among users.
Wiki.com gathers its information from dozens of wikis all around the internet.
It is the ideal search engine for individuals who value community-generated content, such as that available on sites such as Wikipedia and Reddit.
In the event that you’re looking for a topic of discussion forum on a certain topic, Boardreader should have been the first place you go for it.
This search engine retrieves its data from a large number of discussion forums and websites available on the internet. You ought to be able to locate the forum you’re looking for with only a few keystrokes on your keyboard.
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giveWater
givewater.org, which bills itself as a “social impact search engine,” seeks to make a good difference in the world by allowing people to address the problems of poor water quality and inefficient sanitation in the developing world.
Following a meeting with Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity: Water, the company’s CEO was motivated to attempt to make a difference via his own business and the organisation was born.
The Gibiru search engine was launched in 2009 and is a web browser that enables viewers to do private searches without their online activity being tracked by third parties.
Due to the fact that the browser does not record IP addresses or install cookies on computers, there is no information that can be given to advertising.
The Gibiru search browser allows users to browse the web without fear that their browsing actions or other online data may be traced and used against them.
From 2015 and 2018, Amazon’s growth climbed from 46 percent to 54 percent, outpacing Google in terms of revenue growth and profits.
Instead of offering the most relevant results depending on what users would want to know, Google prioritises search results that are relevant to what people want to buy
Amazon’s search results are governed by an algorithm developed by the company, identified as the A9 algorithm. Amazon’s A9 algorithm, according to some reports, is based on sales velocity.
The pace or velocity with which things are retailed on the Amazon marketplace is referred to as sales volume. When it comes to product-related searches, Amazon is on its way to overtaking Google as the most popular search engine, and the stage is set for some fierce competition between these two behemoths.
When it comes to product search, Amazon is the most significant Google alternative, and with more businesses signing up with the Amazon marketplace run by Jeff Bezos’ firm, you can expect more incredible product search results on Amazon.
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Ecosia
Environmentally friendly search engine Ecosia uses the cash earned from search engine searches to fund the planting of trees in the surrounding area. It was established on the 7th of December, 2009.
Typically, the Ecosia team plants a tree for every 45 searches that they conduct. It is for this reason that they offer their monthly financial reports: consumers can see exactly where the income produced by their searches is spent.
The browser’s servers are powered entirely by sustainable power and do not encourage the use of third-party trackers or the sale of personal information to advertising.
Advanced Search with a focus on social networks
Facebook Search is a free service provided by Facebook. Facebook Search pulls only material that has been shared and uploaded on Facebook and does not search outside of its site.
Facebook search focuses on keywords to provide you with the most relevant search results possible. The following sorts of the material may be found on Facebook by searching for them using the Facebook search feature:
- Posts on the marketplace
- Photos
- Video
- Groups
- Applications
- Activities
- Publications
- Links
LinkedIn People Search is a tool that allows you to find people on LinkedIn.
It is possible to locate and connect with any professional on the site by using the Linkedin People search function.
Job Search on LinkedIn
You may utilise the Linkedin Job search to uncover job offers and vacancy ads on the site and then apply for them through the platform’s application process.
Search for answers on LinkedIn
Within LinkedIn Answers, there is a wealth of knowledge that the community has already accumulated. You may search LinkedIn Answers from any page on the site by selecting it from the drop-down menu in the search box.
Brave Search is a new independent search engine that was launched in March 2021 and provides users with total data privacy protection. Brave Search is now available in a beta release on all Brave browsers worldwide (desktop, Android, and iOS).
A fully independent index underpins Brave Search beta, which does not monitor or store any data from users or their search actions. Brave features its own search index, which allows it to answer popular requests privately and without relying on third-party services.
List of Image Search Engines
Flickr is a multimedia content hosting service headquartered in the United States of America. It was established in 2004 by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake, who are both from the United Kingdom. Flickr is the second-best picture hosting site for amateur and professional photographers all over the world, and it is free to use.
Flickr provides access to images and videos for free, and there is no requirement to register a profile on the network. However, if someone wishes to post photographs or videos to the site, they must first register with the site. Flickr is accessible as a mobile application for devices running Android and iOS.
Founded in 2010, Pinterest is an image-sharing social networking platform that enables users to store and discover photos, gifs, and video snippets from across the web. Pinterest is owned by Pinterest Inc. Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp came up with the idea for the company in 2010.
Pinterest is made up of pins, which are graphics that have been submitted to the site or that have been connected to another site. A board contains a collection of pins that have been classified and may be repined by other users if they wish to share your collection with their followers. Pinterest’s visual search feature, which was launched in 2017, allows users to search for particular aspects inside a picture by searching via the Pinterest database.
TinEye is a Toronto-based reverse image search engine that specialises in finding images that have been altered.
It is the first picture search engine on the web to get results using image identification technology rather than keywords, making it a pioneer in the field.
Users can submit photographs up to 20 MB in size to the site or enter the image’s URL into the search engine to have it found. After a few seconds, TinEye will respond with information on the image where it was utilised, along with the date and time of the upload.
TinEye is capable of locating pictures in JPEG, GIF, or PNG file formats. Many different types of picture copyright infringements may be discovered with this program.
The Key Takeaway
Nevertheless, while Google may be the most common choice among search engines, it may not necessarily be the ideal option for you, based on your requirements and goals.
Numerous other search engines are capable of providing a more pleasant browsing experience for their users than Google.
It doesn’t matter if you are cautious about privacy or simply want to examine your alternatives; there are several search engines to choose from. Give some of them a shot if you want to do yourself a favour.
