On This Page

Top 10 Best Search Engines Ranked

It might come as a surprise to you that Google isn’t the only search engine people use to surf the internet. Yes, Google is extremely popular however there are a number of other search engines currently used by millions of people across the globe. 

Other search engines may seem insignificant when compared to Google but if you take a look at the user base, revenues, and overall net worth they are still pretty sizable.

Let’s take a look at what a search engine is. 

What’s a Search Engine?

A search engine is software that allows users to search for information through keywords and phrases. Search engines can give immediate results to millions of different websites that have been indexed. 

They use different algorithms to determine which pages are shown at the top of the search engine, this means they prioritize the best quality pages in order to satisfy the user’s search intent. 

Now you know what a search engine is, let’s look at the top 10 in order of total market share. 


Top 10 Search Engine List

Google 

image 53

Coming in at #1 we have Google, you might have heard of it before. Google is the world’s most used search engine with a massive market share of 92%. It’s so powerful that it’s used by more people than all of the other search engines combined. 

Created in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin it’s now worth around $1 trillion. In 2021 alone it brought in $257 billion in revenue. Fun fact, did you know Larry and Sergey offered to sell Google in 1999 for just $750,000? And what’s even more astonishing is that the company it was offered to decided to reject the offer.

Google uses an advanced algorithm to decide which pages are shown at the top of the SERPs and it’s constantly evolving to become more efficient. 

Microsoft Bing

image 54

Next up we have the second biggest search engine, Microsoft Bing. It currently has a current market share of 8%. This shows how big Google actually is, with the second most popular search engine being so far behind.

Bing is owned by Microsoft and they were hoping to be a competitor of Google, but as you can see in the numbers it’s not going well. Microsoft Bing is likely the second biggest search engine due to the fact it’s the default browser on all Windows computers.

It was launched in 2009 and last year it brought in total revenue of $8.5 billion, not bad for being so far behind Google. 

Yahoo

image 55

At number three on the list, we have Yahoo with a total market share of around 1.39%. This is another massive drop-off even compared to Bing which shows how popular the top search engines are.

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo who were both graduate students at Stanford University. 28 years and 8,600 employees later Yahoo is now worth an estimated $4.83billion. In 2021 it brought in around $1.3 billion in revenue. 

Remember we told you a company turned down buying Google for just $750,000? That company was Yahoo! 

Yahoo’s search engine is also powered by Microsoft Bing, which is why using both of them might yield similar search results.

Baidu

image 56

Baidu comes in next with a current market share of around 1.17%. Baidu is the ‘Google’ for users in China as it’s where the majority of its users are from. Even with Google’s popularity only around 2% of its users are Chinese. 

It was founded just two years ago in 2020 by Robin Li and Eric Xu. Last year the search engine brought in $18 billion in revenue and currently has a massive 45,000 employee base. 

Baidu can be accessed worldwide however it currently only shows the Chinese language. 

Yandex

image 57

Fifth on the list is Yandex, with a current market share of around 1.06. A vast majority of its users come from Russia as that’s who it caters to although it can be used by anyone. 

Yandex was founded in 2000 by Arkady Volozh and last year the company brought in $4.94 billion. That number is expected to be significantly lower this year due to the Russia-Ukraine war. 

It currently provides around 70 services like the search engine, communication tools, storage information, shopping, and a list of other functions. 

DuckDuckGo

image 58

DuckDuckGo is sixth on the list as it holds a current market share of around 0.69%. This search engine is all about privacy, which is priceless in a world where companies collect more and more information about their users.

It was founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008 and it’s estimated to be worth around $900 million. 

Unlike all the other search engines on our list, DuckDuckGo doesn’t have an actual database to find results when a user searches for something. Instead, they claim to get their search results from over 400 different sources. The DuckDuckGo crawler also searches places like Wikipedia in order to provide instant results.

If you prefer a search engine that doesn’t track your activity and bombard you with ads then DuckDuckGo is worth trying. 

Ask.com

image 59

Ask.com is next up on our last and currently holds a market share of around 0.42%. It was founded in 1996 by Garrett Gruener and David Warthen, with an estimated worth of $2.5 billion. Previously called Ask Jeeves, it was bought over in 2005 for $2 billion.

Ask.com works slightly differently than your regular search engine. Instead, it works on an ask/answer basis. Answers are provided by other users which can lower the authority of some answers compared to Google or Bing. 

Naver

image 60

At number eight we have the Naver search engine with a current market share of 0.13%. It was founded by Hae Jin Lee in 1999 and is a very popular search engine used in Korea, with 75% of its market share belonging to South Korea.

It started off as just a search engine but has since evolved to offer multiple different services including a messenger, Naver webtoon, a camera app, and a host of other features.

Ecosia 

image 61

Ecosia is ninth on the list with a 15 million user base and a current market share of around 0.10%. It was founded in 2009 by Christian Kroll and last year brought in around £28 million in revenue. 

Chrisitan’s goal with Ecosia is an environmental one, with the company claiming to have planted more than 150 million trees since it was founded in 2009.

Similar to DuckDuckGo, the privacy of its users is vital to them and therefore they don’t permanently store your searches, use any tracking software or sell your information to advertisers for profit. 

If you want to surf the internet and help save the planet while doing so, Ecosia is definitely worth trying out.

AOL

image 62

AOL is last on our list with a market share of 0.06%. It was founded way back in 1985 by Steve Case, Jim Kimsey, William Von Meister, and Marc Seriff.

In 2015 the company was acquired by Verizon for $4.4 billion. As Google and other powerful competitors entered the search engine space AOL shifted its attention elsewhere. Instead, they started to focus on buying large online media companies, such as TechCrunch, Huffington Post, and many more.


Which Search Engine Is Best?

No doubt the best search engine to use in 2022 is Google. It’s extremely powerful as a search engine and can offer a number of other services like Google Drive, Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Maps. 

It’s not for everyone, however. Google doesn’t care very much about its user’s privacy with the number of cookies and data being sold to external parties. If this is a concern then you’d want to go with a search engine like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia as they are more user friendly when it comes to privacy concerns. 


Most Popular Search Engines Chart (Market Share)

If you want to see a visual representation of how the top 10 search engines line, here’s a chart.

Search EngineMarket Share %
Google 92%
Microsoft Bing8%
Yahoo1.39%
Baidu1.17%
Yandex1.06%
DuckDuckGo0.69%
Ask.com0.42%
Naver0.13%
Ecosia0.10%
AOL0.06%

Conclusion

We can’t see anyone knocking Google off its #1 spot anytime in the foreseeable future, however, the battle for the remaining spots is still ongoing.

This post may have opened your eyes to the other possibilities instead of using Google, you might switch to a different search engine in hopes of better privacy or to even contribute to a greener planet. 

STRATxAI

AI investment strategy platform.