When it comes to looking for something on the Internet, it seems like most people use the phrase, “Google it”, rather than just “Search for it”. Just like those before them, yes, we are talking to you Kleenex, Band-Aid, Q-Tip, Jell-O, and the impressive list of other brands who have become an eponym for something, the term “Google” has seemed to predominately replace the word, “search”. This may be mind blowing for some of you, but Google is indeed just a search engine and not actually the term for looking something up on the web. And, we know, this may be another shocker, but there are actually other search engines out there that you can use as well. What search engines are the most popular? Let’s take a look.
History of Google
Before we take look at what search engines are the most popular, we thought we should tackle the one that currently has over 90% of the search market share worldwide, accounts for over 95% of mobile searches, and is the one that has seemed to have taken over the term “search”, Google.
We have taken their story straight from the source. According to Google, “The Google story begins in 1995 at Stanford University. Larry Page was considering Stanford for grad school and Sergey Brin, a student there, was assigned to show him around. Working from their dorm rooms, they built a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub (it was soon after named Google).”
In 1998, Google Inc. was established, and basically, the rest is history (literally). You can read more about the Google story here, but we are going to move along for now.
What Search Engines are the Most Popular?
I guess we should have phrased this question, “What other search engines are popular?”. Well, it turns out that there are actually quite a few. Again, we know, some of you may be in shock to know that there are even other Internet search options out there, but there are, and they are trying to hold their own. We are going to review them below:
- Bing: This one is more common than some of the other search engines we are going to include on this list and is number two to Google in search share, with about 3% of worldwide searches being completed on this engine. Bing actually powers the third most used search provider, Yahoo!.
- Yahoo!: We know, we gave this one away above. Yahoo! Search is a Yahoo! internet search provider that uses Microsoft’s Bing search engine to power results. This search tool accounts for about 1% of worldwide searches.
- Yandex: When it comes to popular search engines, you may be scratching your head about this one, because you have never heard of it. Yandex actually holds a similar worldwide search share as Yahoo!, but is not super popular in the United States. If you go to Russia, you may find that this search engine is strongly competing with Google for market share.
- DuckDuckGo: While DuckDuckGo has about 50% less of worldwide searches than Yahoo! And Yandex (around 0.5 %), it may be small, but it is mighty. This search engine prides itself on providing private searches and not tracking people online.
- Baidu: To round out our list of search engines that are the most popular, we are going to stop with Baidu, which has just a slightly smaller worldwide search market share than DuckDuckGo. Baidu is a Chinese multinational technology company that offers search options. It may be less known in the US, but worldwide people are using this search engine.
It doesn’t really matter what search engine you are using to complete your daily Internet searches, the point is, the average person uses a search engine to complete around 3-4 searches a day. People are searching not just for fun facts, but for products and services that they need, on a regular basis. Can your business be found?
While you may not have known about some of the search engines that are most popular, at Water Bear Marketing, we do. With our PaidSearch product, we ensure that your business can reach 99% of the places people search online.
Our proprietary technology helps us to proactively make adjustments to our clients’ campaigns to drive more leads and sales. We use our proprietary processes and technology to track and improve your results. With our PaidSearch product, our goal is to generate revenue for our clients that meets or exceeds their exceptions.
Contact us today to schedule a free advertising consultation.