Google vs other world giants
In 2020, Google was the indisputable champion of the world’s search engine market. The latest research indicates that Google has acquired 88.14% of the world’s market share [1].
Other leaders of the search industry are [1]:
- Bing 6.18%
- Yahoo 2.51%
- Baidu 0.59%
- Yandex 0.26%
In the United States, Google dominates the market, managing 92% of overall traffic, and 96% of mobile traffic. The remaining portion of traffic in 2020 is dispersed as follows [2]:
Bing
- Overall traffic 3.9%
- Mobile traffic 1.4%
Yahoo
- Overall traffic 2.8%
- Mobile traffic 1.8 %
DuckDuckGo
- Overall traffic 0.8%
- Mobile traffic 0.9%
Bing
Bing is one of the world’s best-liked search engines, holding 12.24% of the US market share in December 2020 [3]. Bing’s website introduces colorful, professional imagery collected from various platforms. Art lovers can enjoy a variety of masterpieces with the option to share via Facebook, Twitter, and Skype. Bing is a powerful and accurate search tool created by Steve Ballmer in 2009.
As of December 2020, Bing had about 1.06 billion monthly visitors, with an average visit of 7 minutes and a bounce rate of 41%. The most traffic to Bing came from the United States (34.09%), China (22.29%), Japan (7.43%), Germany (5.36%), and the UK (4.05%) [4].
Statistics from 2018 show Bing Search to be popular among all age groups, with a greater preference among middle-aged adults compared to younger and older adults [5]:
- 11% of users aged 18-24
- 18% between ages 25-34
- 18% between ages 35-44
- 20% aged 45-54
- 17% between ages 55-64
- 17% aged 65+
Yahoo
The Yahoo search engine encompasses platform services such as email, news, and entertainment in multiple languages. Created in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo remains one of the oldest, best-functioning, and most profit-generating tools, with its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California [6].
Many people still enjoy the many features offered by Yahoo in 2020 [7]. In December 2020, Yahoo.com ranked 12th in the world and 6th in the US. It had about 3.95 billion monthly visitors, with 53.32% of traffic coming from the United States [8].
Yahoo remains in trend for its email services, used by many people In the United States. Research by Statista (2017) examined Yahoo and Google email users and found that [9]:
- 61% of people aged 18-29 prefer Google versus 19% who choose Yahoo
- 31% of people aged 65+ prefer Yahoo versus 24% who Choose Google
Baidu
Baidu is one of the most powerful search engines in the world [10]. According to Statista, in 2018, 21.7% favored Baidu versus Google, at 72.8%, and 5.5% were happy with both [11]. A new version of Baidu is now available in English.
Baidu ranks 6th in the world and #1 in China. In December 2020, Baidu had about 5.7 billion visitors with an average stay of 6 min. 15 sec., and a bounce rate of 21.78%. 93.62% of traffic to Baidu came from China, 1.95% from the United States, 1.04% from Taiwan, 0.94% from Hong Kong, and 0.42% from Japan [12].
Interesting facts about Baidu:
- Baidu has an AI image service that helps users find missing persons. The AI can recognize a person, even from an older photo [13]
- Baidu had revenues of $4.158 bln USD in the 3rd quarter of 2020 [14]
- Baidu develops autonomous vehicles [15]
Yandex
Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich developed Yandex back in 1997 [16]. Today, Yandex is available in Russian and in English, Yandex has been gaining momentum over the years, bringing in huge revenues. According to Statista, Yandex’s revenue in 2019 was 175.39 billion Russian Rubles [17].
In December 2020, Yandex had about 3.27 billion monthly visitors with 92.36% of traffic coming from Russia, with the average visit lasting 11 minutes, and a bounce rate of 28.64% [18].
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is favored worldwide for its privacy, lack of ads and aversion to social engineering. In November 2020, It acquired 0.61% of the world market [19]. Created by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, DuckDuckGo continues to make its way upward from 16,413,461 total queries in 2010 to 1,262,077,914 in 2021 [20]. In December 2020, DuckDuckGo had 869.1 million visitors with 48.51% of traffic coming from the US, 6.95% from Germany, 6.37% from the UK, 4.89% from Canada, and 2.73% from France, with an average time spent of 9 minutes, 14 seconds, and a bounce rate of 15.45% [21].
Other top search engines of 2020
Google is the world’s number one search engine, yet new search engines and tools are appearing on the world market, offering alternative ways to search and additional services such as:
- Confidential and untraceable search
- Child-protected search
- Localized search
- Theme-based search
- Email, cloud, and software development solutions
Based on the most vital characteristics of a search engine such as trustworthiness, reliability, safety, user-friendliness, and accuracy, here are the top best brands of 2020:
AOL
This American Search Engine appeared first back in 1985 [22]. Offering search, daily news, email services, and more, with warm and traditional delivery, AOL remains popular in 2020, especially for its email services. Some people use AOL out of habit [23].
Ask
Formerly Ask Jeeves (1996), Ask is a question/answer-based search engine in 2020. Ask.com utilizes natural language processing methods, and users can pose questions in their most natural formats. In December 2020, Ask.com had nearly 60.75 million monthly users, with an average time per visit of 4 min. 44 sec, and a bounce rate 53.48%. Most traffic to the site came from the US (22.37%), Japan (11.99%), and the UK (6.01%) [24].
Dogpile
Dogpile is a metasearch engine with a friendly dog mascot and a “go fetch” command for search. Dogpile was created by Aaron Flin in 1996. Like other meta engines, dogpile gathers information from Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other robust search tools. Dogpile uses its profits to support animal charities.
Ecosia
Brought to existence in 2009 by a businessman from Germany, Christian Kroll, Escocia now is a creative team of like-minded people who seek to revive the world’s environment, using profits to plant trees in areas they are most needed. Every person who uses the engine can bring a new tree into this world.
GMX
GMX search engine, platform, and email services are liked in Germany, along with Google, Yahoo, Web.de, and other engines. Besides having regular functions such as email, news, and interactive gaming, GMX furnishes full cloud services with document editing options.
Lycos
Lycos was created at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania in 1995. Besides search engine services, Lycos offers an email service and affordable web development solutions with Tripod and Angelfire, worldwide. Lycos has a user-friendly web structure and an attractive interface.
Naver
Naver is the most beloved search engine in South Korea. According to Statista, it had 27.7 mln. unique visitors in South Korea in August 2020 [25]. The primary reason Naver is so successful in Korea is because it provides content and services in tune with Korean culture, specifically for Korean people [26]. In December 2020, Naver had around 1.52 billion in monthly traffic, with 94.35% of traffic from South Korea, 1.93% from the US, 0.7% from Japan, 0.41% from China, and 0.33% from Canada. The average duration of a visit was 19 min. 43 sec with a low bounce rate of 21.85% [27].
Seznam
Seznam is one of the leaders in the Czech Republic, harboring 10.04% of the market in November 2020 [28]. Because Google has steadily taken over the market, Seznam’s share fluctuates between 10 and 15% [29]. People use Seznam to find and enjoy interesting content and information. It is an award-winning company, recognized as the top employer in the Czech Republic [30]. In December 2020, Seznam had 312 million monthly visitors, with 97.7% of traffic coming from the Czech Republic[31].
Swisscows
With their data center located in the remote Swiss Alps, Swisscows offers an extra secure search experience with features such as a text summarizing tool, VPN anonymous search, and ad-free search. Swisscows was created by Andreas Wiebe with the intention of protecting children from violent and adult content. Swisscows does not display unapproved content in its search results. As of December 2020, Swisscows had 2.53 million visitors, with 45.06% of traffic coming from Switzerland, 25.6% from the US, 5.77% from Canada, 3.93% from Germany, and 2.7% from the UK [32].
Yippy
Yippy organizes information in a category-based manner. It provides cloud services and can be an optimal, private, and safe solution for businesses and organizations. Yippy has a unique algorithm that allows users to derive large quantities of organized data from a single search attempt. It also has the ability to conduct sentiment analysis, to derive even more meaning from data sets. [33]. The latest data from December 2020 shows that Yippy had 626 thousand visitors per month, with 64.07% of the traffic from the US [34].
Summing up
Among a vast array of search engines, Google remains the indisputable world leader in web search. Because the majority of people and organizations use Google as their primary desktop and mobile search engine, ranking high on Google is a number one goal for most businesses and private firms. Since many other search engines rely on Google to display their search results, ranking high on Google can also mean ranking high on any other search engine. With so many search engines to choose from, consumers today have multiple options for finding information and content on the Internet.
