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.
As opposed to our previous list of search engine alternatives to Google, this list will concentrate purely on informational searches rather than say… Gifs or copyright free images.
US
1) Google
Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors: 1.6 billionAlexa Rank: 1
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 millionAlexa Rank: 22
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 millionAlexa Rank: n/a
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 millionAlexa Rank: 31
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 millionAlexa Rank: n/a
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 millionAlexa Rank: 767
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 millionAlexa Rank: 674
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 millionAlexa 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 millionAlexa Rank: 2,110
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.)
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