Top 11 Search engines that ranked in order of market share

You know, apart from the most obvious search engine. And possibly the second most obvious one too. In fact I’ll start again, what are the eight most popular search engines after Google and Bing?

The first list below contains the most popular search engines currently available, ordered by most to least popular in the US. The ranking is according to eBiz, it’s in order of estimated unique monthly visitors and is accurate as of August 2016.

The second list is a global overview of most popular search engines, according to Net Market Share, which is ranked in order of market share and is again accurate as of August 2016

US

1) Google

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 1.6 billion
Alexa Rank: 1

Google Starting Date 4 September 1998

Why should you use it?

With 72.48% of the world’s market share of search, as a marketer you don’t really have a choice not to use it for both paid and organic reach.

As an every day user, for all of our cynicism and occasionally flippant references to The Circle, you have to admit Google is utterly indispensable in your every day life. For every interference (the constant curtailing of organic results) there are 10 triumphs… Google Maps, Gmail, the terrifying relevance of Knowledge Graph, the killing of payday loan ads, AMP…

Where the heck would we all be without the… yes, I’m going to say it… search giant.

2) Bing

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 400 million
Alexa Rank: 22

Bing Starting Date June 1, 2009

Why should you use it?

As I said in earlier in the year in the aforementioned ‘alternatives to Google’ post, there are some great reasons to choose Bing:

• Bing’s video search is significantly better than Google’s.
• Bing often gives twice as many autocomplete suggestions than Google does.
• Bing has a great linkfromdomain:[site name] feature that highlights the best ranked outgoing links from that site, helping you figure out which other sites your chosen site links to the most.

3) Yahoo

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 300 million
Alexa Rank: n/a

Yahoo Starting Date 2 March 1995

Why should you use it?

Well that’s all a but up in the air at the moment, as Verizon has just purchased Yahoo for $4.8 billion dollars and is planning on merging it with AoL.

Yahoo will continue to operate independently pending regulatory approval of the deal, which is expected to be completed by early 2017. After this, all of Yahoo’s news, finance and sports platforms will be added to AOL’s media assets, which include The Huffington Post and TechCrunch.

4) Ask

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 245 million
Alexa Rank: 31

Ask Starting Date June 1996

Why should you use it?

Despite Google’s determination to be the ultimate font of all knowledge on its own SERP, Ask is still good for specific question related searches, with results centring on Q&A related matches.

And hey, sometimes it’s nice to get help from a butler.

5) Aol Search

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 125 million
Alexa Rank: n/a

Aol Starting Date 1983

Why should you use it?

As mentioned above, the AOL you know and possibly love may become a different beast once Verizon Communications merges it with Yahoo.

Let’s remember simpler times….

6) Wow

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 100 million
Alexa Rank: 767

wow Starting Date 1996

Why should you use it?

Because it works more like a news site then a search engine, which is handy if you want everything in one place. There is a strong lean towards news and celebrity based articles rather than pure Wikipedia-style information, but the handy links to related social channels and wiki pages are useful.

7) WebCrawler

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 65 million
Alexa Rank: 674

WebCrawler Starting Date April 20, 1994

Why should you use it?

WebCrawler has a far clearer delineation between paid search ads and organic results. It also seems to feature far more natural ’blue links’ than Google.

8) MyWebSearch

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 60 million
Alexa Rank: 405

Why should you use it?

Uh… don’t.

According to the Malware Wikia, MyWebSearch is a spyware and search toolbar program that allows the user to query various popular search engines and comes bundled with an exhausting suite of ‘goodies’ such as such as Smiley Central, Webfetti, Cursor Mania, My Mail Stationary, My Mail Signature, My Mail Stamps, FunBuddyIcons… the fun goes on and on.

Most damningly of all though, Malware Wikia reports that despite it not carrying any malware attributes, an independent repair lab has classified the toolbar as a nuisance because of “slowdowns in return for features that are already built into many modern web browsers.”

9) Infospace

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 24 million
Alexa Rank: 2,110

infospace Starting Date March 1996

Why should you use it?

You may be using it already… InfoSpace is a “provider of white label search and monetization solutions” and it also operates its own branded search sites, including the metasearch engine Dogpile, as well as Zoo.com and WebCrawler (as mentioned above.)

10) Info.com

Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 13.5 million
Alexa Rank: 1,938

info.com Starting Date 

Why should you use it?

Info.com aggregates results from the indexed web AND social media channels. It monitors real-time social conversations and according to them, it delivers “newsworthy, trending, and popular results before they hit the indexed web.” These streams are classified into structured topics which provides additional context and insight.

Bonus: 11) DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo Starting Date September 25, 2008

Honourable mention to DuckDuckGo, the new kid on the block that doesn’t store your personal information, which has managed to accrue 13 million unique monthly visitors and is currently the 11th most popular search engine in the US.

Worldwide

Here’s the marketshare worldwide for search engines…

1) Google – 72.48%
2) Bing – 10.39%
3) Yahoo – 7.78%
4) Baidu – 7.14%
5) Ask – 0.22%
6) AOL – 0.15%
7) Excite – 0.01%