Google’s firm grip on the search engine market is a marketer’s dream — and nightmare.
Commanding nearly 92% of the worldwide search market share, Google is where most of us focus our search engine marketing.
But that market share also makes it a lot harder to hang on to high-ranking search engine results pages (SERP). The good news is that despite those high numbers, there are still opportunities for the savvy marketer to reach the millions of people who use other search engines.
Especially now that AI-powered search engines have quite literally entered the chat, there’s renewed interest in non-Google search engines for both users and SEOs. (And if you’re a marketer looking for some ground-up support on how to get started with SEO — we’ve got a pack for that.)
Note: To compile this list, I looked at the worldwide market share of search engines on desktop and mobile from June 2023 to June 2024.
I averaged each search engine’s market share over 12 months with data from Statcounter GlobalStats, unless otherwise noted.
Google dominates in the US, handling 60% of all search queries — but that still presents a huge opportunity for marketers to reach the other 40%.
It’s the logical place to start for marketing, running paid marketing campaigns, and developing organic traffic strategies.
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But keep in mind that Google‘s algorithm works to fulfill users’ needs directly on Google so they don’t need to click any links. Features like this, plus Google’s popularity, might make it hard for you to capture as much website traffic as you want.
Google recently rolled out AI Overviews, which uses Gemini, its proprietary AI, to summarize your search results.
Although Google began releasing improvements to AI Overviews as soon as it was released, it’s still a good idea to double-check the results for accuracy.
Despite Google’s dominance, there’s plenty of other search engines — and potentially a large audience for marketers and SEOs looking to expand their audience.
We rounded up 17 other search engines, including several powered by AI, as alternatives to Google.
Microsoft Bing trails at a distant second with an overall average of 3.23% of the market share worldwide and just 0.55% on mobile. This engine also powers Yahoo!, the U.S.’s third-biggest search engine.
Bing’s search pages look similar to Google’s, with the same categories and a similar white background, with blue links and green URLs.
Bing additionally offers Microsoft Rewards, a program that gives you points when you search or shop on the engine. You can redeem those points for gift cards, nonprofit donations, and more.
Bing also recently added an AI component, called Copilot, which summarizes search results for you.
However — this is a pretty important “however” for marketers and SEOs who rely on organic traffic — the direct links are harder for users to find and the first link it provided was to a different landing page than the one linked above.
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Copilot tries to be encouraging about the likelihood of the recent Eurovision winner touring my city. Its human-like tone stands out from other AI-powered searches.
Its news-heavy page isn’t the sleekest search engine interface, but Yahoo! is still one of the more popular alternatives to Google, with just over 1.16% of the worldwide market share.
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Yahoo! is powered by Microsoft Bing, so search results are similar. Its search results page has a minimalist, text-heavy interface.
However, it’s still an important search engine in its own right, with over 4 billion monthly users in 2023.
In some local markets, smaller search engines go head-to-head with Google — and win.
Russian search engine Yandex has roughly 1.62% of the worldwide market share, but in its home country, that skyrockets to nearly 71%. (Google holds the number two spot.) If you do business globally and are looking to reach Russian customers, there are a few things to keep in mind.
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For example, Yandex has many quality indicators, or badges, that it can display alongside search results. One of the most prominent is the site quality index (SQI), which indicates how useful your site is to users.
Like Google, Yandex considers whether a user’s query has local intent, and it will display regional-dependent results. To account for this, you’ll need to go into Yandex’s webmaster tools and set a site region.
It’s not advertised anywhere on its search engine, but Yandex’s corporate website notes that AI technologies are delivered to all its products, including search.
If you‘re uneasy about targeted ads or don’t want your search data stored, you might want to try DuckDuckGo, which touts itself as “the search engine that doesn’t track you.”
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It also doesn’t collect or store any information, so you can search for shoes without being bombarded by subsequent Macy‘s ads. It’s worth noting there are still ads on DuckDuckGo — just not personalized ones.
DuckDuckGo has a clean interface that makes it easy to navigate. With more than 4.5 billion users every month in 2023, it’s slowly gaining steam in the search market, especially as users become more concerned about privacy.
Baidu is China’s largest search engine, capturing 52.15% of China’s search market.
The search engine is in Mandarin, but otherwise looks similar to Google, with a white background, blue links, and green URLs. Like Google, Baidu aims to incorporate more rich features in the SERPs.
If you’re looking to appeal to the Asian market, Baidu is a good option to consider.
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However, the search engine censors certain images and blocks pro-democracy websites. If you’re comparing search results, you’ll find a more comprehensive results list on Google.
Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, is a search engine that was designed — pre-AI-powered search — to answer questions.
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Ask.com’s interface is similar to Yahoo!’s, with news under the search bod. However, unlike Yahoo!, which is powered by Bing, Ask.com is a standalone search engine.
Naver is South Korea’s second most popular search engine, claiming 53.04% of the country’s search engine market. Naver’s interface is entirely in Korean, with no English version.
More than a simple search engine, Naver users can access news content, search suggestions, and more.
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Although it’s in Korean, I used Google Translate to view the landing page in English.
Notably, Naver is a localized search engine, meaning that it does not crawl and catalog the entire internet.
If you’re targeting the South Korean market with your content, make sure your SEO matches the criteria of South Korea’s second-most popular search engine.
Ecosia is “the search engine that plants trees.” For every search a user makes with Ecosia (either the webpage or its free browser extension), Ecosia will allocate part of its profits to plant trees in vulnerable areas.
To date, Ecosia has planted nearly 210 million trees and dedicated another 85 million euros (about $92 million) to climate action.
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Note to marketers: Ecosia’s sponsored spots push your content nearly below the fold.
Ecosia is most popular in its home country of Germany, where it has 0.87% of the market. Like Yahoo!, Ecosia runs on Microsoft Bing.
AOL, formerly known as America Online, is both an online media company and a search engine. The interface features a search bar and national news articles, along with local news and weather.
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AOL’s search results page is very ad-heavy — you’ll have to look below the fold to see your results.
Most of AOL’s traffic is generated from the United States, but it’s on the decline, at only 0.09% of the market.
Internet Archive is a different kind of search engine. As its name implies, Internet Archive is a free archive of books, movies, software, music, websites, etc.
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Instead of attempting to rank in this search engine, users can sign up for a free account and upload their content to the archives.
Most of Internet Archive’s audience is located in the United States. However, the search engine is gaining popularity in other countries, such as Great Britain and India.
The popular SEO tool Ahrefs launched Yep, an AI-powered search engine, in 2022.
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Yep’s business model distinguishes it from the rest. It shares 90% of its ad revenue with content creators in an effort to encourage more people to share their knowledge and high-quality content.
Of the half a dozen or so AI-powered search engines I tested for this article, Brave was one of my favorites. In our own research, it was the AI search engine of choice, preferred by 8% of respondents.
Brave’s default settings don’t include AI search, but once you toggle on “search with AI,” it delivers AI summaries above traditional search results.
It has a clean interface and some of the most enhanced privacy features of any search engine on this list. It blocks ads and cross-site cookie tracking, and it doesn’t collect any info about its users.
HubSpot’s research suggests that will be key to capturing regular AI search users — privacy and security were among the top concerns, and a quarter of respondents said they’re only likely to use AI search engines if their concerns are addressed.
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Brave’s search results were impressively thorough. When I asked for help writing a listicle about search engines, it began with the history of search engines — but it still gave me relevant information about current search engines.
Andi has a vertically split interface, with the typical AI search engine chat box on the left, and sources on the right. That’s useful for marketers and users alike, both of whom want high placement of the most relevant results.
Seeing familiar, credible sources may alleviate consumer anxiety around AI. Getting incorrect information was the top concern cited in recent HubSpot research..
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Perplexity has gotten a lot of buzz in 2024. It has a similar design to other AI search engines, with source links above a longer answer in easily skimmable bullet points. It also features citations that reveal the source when you hover over them — essential to ensure that you’re not falling prey to misinformation.
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HubSpot’s research showed that Perplexity tied with You.com as the second-most popular AI search engine, preferred by 5% of all respondents.
Phind.com bills itself as “an answer engine” designed specifically for developers. It still does a fine job handling the more mundane queries, but if you need help getting “from idea to working product,” this search engine was built for you.
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You.com has four assistants to choose from to support a variety of more complicated queries: Smart, Genius, Creative, and Research.
I tried out the Research assistant to see if it could recommend some prestige dramas for me.
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It prepared an easily skimmable report that began, “If you are a fan of prestige dramas, you are likely looking for TV shows that offer high-quality storytelling, complex characters, and often, a cinematic feel.”
The results included the usual suspects (The Wire, Sopranos), but also a few more recent recs (The Crown, Succession).
It also has 15 AI models to choose from — if you’re an AI enthusiast, this is the one to use. You can select from different versions of GPT, Gemini, Claude, and others.
I asked Komo to tell me about HubSpot’s website grader, and it quickly summarized it, calling it “a powerful and comprehensive tool” (stop it, we’re blushing).
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Like other AI search engines, it has bibliography-style citations that make it easy to sort fact from fiction.
TikTok and YouTube aren’t search engines per se, but think about how often you use their search functions.
Recent HubSpot research showed that 42% — not quite half! — of respondents turn to social media to search for information. That’s more than any other search engine except Google.
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, has already incorporated its proprietary AI search into all three platforms.
Google is always working to prioritize good content, with improvements like the 2024 Core Update, which penalizes lower-quality, unoriginal, often AI-generated content. HubSpot’s Manager of EN Blog Strategy, Amanda Sellers, says it has huge implications for the industry.
“First, Google is sending a strong signal that content written by humans is preferable to content by computers. (Ironic, given virtually all of the SERPs are algorithmized.)”
Sellers also points out that this update should encourage SEOs to take a more comprehensive approach to site performance.
“This update prioritizes user-first content over keyword-first content,” Sellers explains. “With this in mind, SEOs should be looking at their site as a whole and making sure they’re creating helpful, reliable content for their users — not for search engines.”
Ultimately, it’s essential to consider alternative traffic opportunities besides Google when creating an SEO strategy.
By diversifying your sources, you’re more likely to capture the first page on SERPs, and you’re in a better position to find a truly ideal target audience.
This article was originally published in September 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
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