Alternative Search Engines

When it comes to writing website content and optimising our online presence, we’re guilty of thinking that Google is the only search engine on the Internet. While Google does have a massive share, it is not the only search engine.

There are many others, and it is important to consider these when it comes to putting your marketing strategy together. With that in mind, below, we are going to take you through some of the most popular alternative search engines to Google.

DuckDuckGo

There is only one place to begin, and this is with possibly the most popular private search engine. When it was launched in 2008, DuckDuckGo decided to position itself in the market as “anti-Google,” and this has worked very well for the search engine. More than 400 sources are used for the results, including partners, such as Bing, which is a search engine we will also touch upon, and crowdsourced sites and its own crawler, the DuckDuckBot.

One of the standout points when it comes to DuckDuckGo is the level of privacy that is on offer. The company has stated that it does not utilise tracking cookies and it also does not store IP addresses and any other information that can be used to personally identify someone. Nevertheless, do note that searches are saved, albeit in a manner that is non-identifiable.

Therefore, DuckDuckGo markets itself as a private haven, although we should note that the search engine is based in the United States. The US is not exactly a great jurisdiction in terms of privacy, as it is part of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which means it has committed to sharing digital data with the other member countries.

Bing

As promised, Bing is another search engine that we’re going to discuss, as it is arguably the most well-known search engine after Google. Bing is owned by the tech giant Microsoft and it has six percent of the market share.

Bing is a search engine that offers similar features to Google. You can expect knowledge panels, time, currency conversions, translation, and all of the other standard features that we have come to expect from a search engine page.

Unlike DuckDuckGo, Bing is not a search engine that is focused on privacy. All of the interactions that a user has with Microsoft products are collected by the brand.

Yahoo

Yahoo used to be one of the biggest Internet businesses around the world, but we think it is fair to say that the company does not have the impact that it once did. Yes, it is still a tech giant, but we would have expected it to kick on by now.

The search engine, which is used to be incredibly popular, is now powered by Bing. Shockingly, though, it still has a position near the top in terms of market share. It seems that the Yahoo name still has a lot of power in the industry!

When you consider the fact that Bing is a search engine in itself, it powers Yahoo, and it is used in part by DuckDuckGo for their results, it is not hard to see why you may want to think about targeting Bing when it comes to your website optimization.

One thing about the search engine result pages with Yahoo is that the paid ads aren’t as clear as they are with other search engines. Yes, they display the word ‘Ad,’ which is now required by law, but they are displayed pretty much identically in every other way, and this can mean that people do not always realise that the top results are adverts right away. Of course, this can be a good thing if you are someone who is interested in PPC advertising for your business.

Most of the people who use the Yahoo search engine probably enjoy the other services that are provided by the company, for example, the Sport, Finance, and News areas of Yahoo.

Qwant

The final search engine that we are going to take a look at is Qwant, which is a search engine that is located in Paris and was set up seven years ago in 2013. Surprise, surprise; Bing actually powers this search engine as well. But it does have its own web crawler in place, which supplements the results. This means that you can expect some good and diverse results when using this search engine.

One of the popular features with Qwant is the “search shortcuts” that enable you to look for results from a specific website. For example, you may want to look for a certain book within a library website or even on the book’s category on Amazon. You can do this via Qwant, rather than having to head to the site and manually searching yourself.

In terms of privacy, Qwant has some positive points here. Qwant does not utilise tracking cookies or collate any data. In addition to this, it dissociates your IP address and query, giving you further anonymity.

As Qwant is located in the European Union, GDPR protection is provided. On the negative side, though, France is part of the Nine Eyes intelligence alliance, which means that they are committed to sharing data with the other members.

Final words

So there you have it: an insight into some of the most well-known and up-and-coming search engines that represent valid alternatives to Google. There is no denying that Google is at the top of the tree when it comes to search engines today, but this does not mean that you should just ignore the other search engines that are out there.

They still attract millions of users and they can play a significant role when it comes to getting your business noticed on the web. If you would like to find out more, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us for more information.