Search Engines: 56 Google Alternatives for 2023

By:  Dileep Thekkethil

Updated On: March 28, 2023

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Are you tired of using Google for all your searches? Well, it’s time to explore beyond the giant search engine and discover other alternative options out there! Who knows, someday when doomsday hits Google, you may already have a backup plan.

It’s fascinating to think that the founders of Yahoo had no idea that they were laying the groundwork for their future competitor, Google. But, here we are, two decades later, witnessing the evolution of search engines with AI integration.

Over time, many search engines have come and gone, but their contributions to the search engine world cannot be underestimated. They paved the way for innovation and inspired the new breed of search engines, including the almighty Google.

The good news is that there are other search engines out there with unique features and strengths. Whether you’re looking for region-specific results or a global search experience, there’s an option for everyone.

And the best part? The search functionalities of these search engines remain the same. So, you don’t have to worry about learning new tricks.

But, keep in mind that the popularity of search engines is susceptible to changes over time. So, it’s essential to keep an eye on the latest updates and explore different types of search engines as alternative options.

Stay tuned as we keep updating this post with the most popular search engines and their unique features. Who knows, you may find a new favorite search engine that matches your preferences and needs!

Tribute: Archie, HotBot, Excite, WebCrawler, AskJeevs, AltaVista

Top 10 Most Popular Search Engines In The World (2023 Updated List)

1. Google

No king has ruled forever! But Google still remains a search engine behemoth as of December 2022, having more than 84.08% of the global search market share.

Google is, without a doubt, a cut above all the other competitors in the search engine landscape when it comes to user engagement.

This is one of the reasons why Google has crowned the title the “most used search engine.”

The defining factor for Google’s success is the algorithm that fetches users the most relevant results, and above that, an unmatched personalized user experience.

Google also has its demerits.

When I think about Google’s pristine days, there was more focus on keeping the users happy.

Fast forward to 2022 and their priorities have changed significantly.

They are now more focused on keeping the search for their own benefit. 

The pure organic SERP page of Google is a thing of the past. Google SERP Features such as Ads, Knowledge Graph, Snippets, Map Pack, etc., have taken up prime positions on the SERP, leaving no chance for websites to get the same visibility as before. 

The monetization of user data on a massive scale caused a persona shift for Google as an advertising platform.

The more personalization you prefer, the more user data Google will collect from you.

So, if you’re concerned about privacy, Google is not the search engine for you, at least in 2022. 

Over the centuries, empires have risen and fallen.

If Google continues to run the show without giving credit to websites and without asking for the user’s consent before sharing their data, Google’s omnipotence as the most used search engine may be short-lived. 

So, what if Google follows suit with AltaVista and other major search engines?

Don’t worry, we have a bunch of different web search engines that can take the place of Google if Armageddon hits them. 

Google’s market share as of December 2022: 84.08% 

Is Google Search Results Quality Decreasing?

Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo and a one-time leader of Google’s search team, said Google has concerns about the declining quality of the web.

A recent Freakonomics podcast discussed whether the quality of Google searches has declined over the years. The episode also featured comments from former Google executives like Sridhar Ramaswamy and Jeremy Stoppelman, the CEO of Yelp.

Some issues that Google faces include the declining quality of search results and the need to include search terms like “Reddit” in a query to find answers written by humans.

Google has had to contend with a growing number of low-quality web pages generated by artificial intelligence, which can game the search engine’s algorithm and appear near the top of search results even if the pages have little value.

Google has tried to combat this problem by updating its search algorithm and filtering out pages it deems “unhelpful.”

What is Google’s Take On This?

Mayer said, “I do think the quality of the Internet has taken a hit.” The number of web pages indexed by Google has increased tremendously since it was first founded.

Mayer said, “When I started at Google, there were about 30 million web pages. Today, I think there was one point where Google had seen more than a trillion URLs.”

When asked if URL inflation was to blame for worsening search results, Mayer replied: “When you see the quality of your search results go down, it’s natural to blame Google and be like, ‘Why are they worse?’

To her, though, the more interesting question is why the web is getting worse.

Google’s Solution

In an effort to combat the decline in quality, Google has supplemented its index of a trillion web pages with some content of its own.

If you ask a simple question about cooking or the age of some actor, you may see what Google calls a “featured snippet.” This is the text that answers your question right there on the search results page.

According to Mayer, Google is more hesitant to send users to websites than it used to be. She suspects that this points to a natural tension between Google and publishers.

Google’s Experiment on Ads in SERP

Mayer and others at Google were concerned that showing ads with search results would degrade the experience for users, so they designed an experiment to see how true that might be. They decided to give 1% of Google search users an ad-free experience by excluding them from seeing ads. The experiment went ahead in 2000, when 99% of Google search users saw ads and 1% did not.

The Result

Mayer and her team observed that people conducted 3% more searches when they had ads than when they didn’t. The researchers concluded that this meant that people actually liked Google search results more when they were accompanied by ads than when they weren’t.

Will ChatGPT Replace Google’s Search Engine?

Launched on November 30, 2022, ChatGPT, an AI chatbot answering queries with long-form content, has gone insanely viral and has attracted 1 million users in a matter of weeks.

Developed by OpenAI, a San Francisco-based AI company co founded by Elon Musk, this AI chatbot is powered with GPT-3.5 and answers complex queries in a conversational and human-like manner.

The enormous buzz around ChatGPT, that too, in such a short span of time, has made way for speculations about the AI smashing down upon Google.

So, is ChatGPT here to replace Google? That’s exactly the question.

The answer is no, at least not in a while. Let me tell you why.

ChatGPT has serious limitations (some of which they admit).

Lack of Updated Information

The AI is likely to provide wrong answers to user queries. This means that the answers can be misleading and that cracks down on the prime purpose. Users don’t just look for answers; they look for the right ones.

Plus, as they state, the AI has limited knowledge of events post 2021. For example, when I raised a query “Queen Elizabeth II” on ChatGPT, here’s what I got.

That piece of information is certainly outdated.

Accessing obsolete information like the above is the last thing people want, especially when they search online.

Unlike Google, the AI lacks the efficiency to keep up with the happenings of today’s fast-paced world.

Also, it is programmed to decline inappropriate requests. That means it will not generate any results for certain queries. Besides, it gives no context to “inappropriate requests”, leaving it vague.

Red Flag For Facts

As I said, the AI is likely to provide information that’s not right. But what is even riskier is that it focuses on convincing users with the information it has to offer and cares less about facts.

Here’s another result I got for a different query: elephant eggs.

Do elephants even lay eggs? See how misleading the information is.

So, this AI, despite generating long-form content at super speed, can possibly drive people away from reality based on where it stands at the moment.

Answer Mismatch

ChatGPT doesn’t provide you with concrete answers. What I mean to say is that it can provide extremely different variants to the same query performed in two different ways.

Let’s take the same “elephant eggs” as above. I performed a search, “Do elephants lay eggs?” Below is the response that the AI generated.

Clearly, this answer is in contrast to my previous search result about the same topic. So, the answer that the AI generates for your query depends heavily on how you ask it.

You may wonder, “But Google shows different results for two different queries too.”

That’s true. But again, Google fetches you the best possible results to answer your question and not leaves you confused.

Speaking of which, Google crawls sources across the web, stores them in its index and lets you trace your way down to the origin of a particular source you find in SERPs. On the flip side, in the case of ChatGPT, you have no clue as to where the AI fetches the information from and how reliable it is.

Google definitely has the edge here.

Login Required

Unlike Google, which is a free gateway to tons of sources across the web, ChatGPT requires users to log in using an email address to use the platform.

That said, there are predictions that even if ChatGPT is openly accessible to everyone at the moment, the platform may charge a fee for users to access it in the future.

Google and AI

Some people think ChatGPT is code red for Google. What they may not know is that Google has its teeth deep in AI.

Google’s investment in LaMDA and BERT stands as proof of how serious the search engine giant is about natural language models. Besides, Google also owns Deep Mind, a dedicated Artificial Intelligence and research laboratory.

The search engine giant visibly has its teeth deep in natural language models, and that’s again a perk.

In a nutshell, ChatGPT needs to equip itself with a lot more capabilities to beat Google and dominate the search engine market. That’s definitely not a short-term goal and no one is taking down Google anytime soon.

Here is the list of top search engines in the world. We will be adding new search engines to this list as they come into existence.

2. Microsoft Bing

Microsoft Bing is the second most visited search engine in the world with a market share of 8.95% as of December 2022.

In fact, the market share has improved by considerably since 2018 when Bing had only around 3% market share.

Anyways, this means it will take a long time for Microsoft Bing to beat Google’s share of 84.08%.

But wait, what if Google kills itself? 

The search engine is the result of Microsoft’s crafty mix and match.

Microsoft came to the search engine landscape back in 1998 with MSN.

Like other search engines that were obliterated by Google’s competition, MSN also failed to entice the target audience. 

With that said, what powered MSN from behind was the technologies that Microsoft learned from acquiring different search engines like Inktomi, Looksmart, and AltaVista. 

Microsoft was never willing to give up on something that they knew was a gold mine with miles still to be explored.

In 2006, Microsoft rechristened MSN to Live Search.

Even though they tried making it the default search engine for their popular browser Internet Explorer (now Edge), the users were never happy. 

Changing the default search engine to Google was one of the first things that people used to do soon after buying a PC.

In 2009, Microsoft finally rebranded Live Search to Bing.

Finally, in 2012, Yahoo approached Bing with an offer to share its platform for search. 

So that was the history of Microsoft Bing, and it’s one of the best search engine alternatives out there that can compete against Google’s megalomania – a true alternative search engine. 

Bing uses its own algorithm for crawling and indexing purposes, which makes the SERP entirely different from what a Google search provides.

In addition to this, the homepage of Microsoft Bing is much trendier with dynamic background images, unlike the plain white offered in Google. 

But, the question here is, do people really care?

When it comes to SERP features offered by Bing, there are a few areas where it beats Google. 

  • Local Search Results: The local search results in Bing are highly customizable and very pleasing to the eyes. A casual search term “restaurants near me” gives you a lot of options to filter. In addition to this, the Bing Mobile app brings you the 360 feature to help you find local businesses using your camera.
  • Image Search: Bing Image Search is way more advanced and organized than what you can find on Google. It provides a lot of information to users and many more options to filter the photos. 
  • Video Search: Interestingly, videos that are displayed on Bing are mostly from YouTube, which is owned by Google. However, the way Bing has showcased the videos makes it a cut above Google. The video search results are displayed in thumbnail grids, and users can watch videos within the SERP environment. 
  • Links vs Content: It is well-known that Bing algorithms are more focused on finding and showcasing quality than counting the number of links. Bing tends to rank sites with very few quality links provided the content is top-notch. 

According to recent figures, these features have helped Bing acquire a larger share of the search market in the US. Oberlo reports that Bing has a 6.11% share of the US search market, which is an indication of the Microsoft-owned search engine making steady progress. 

In fact, Microsoft, has confirmed that it will be investing 10 billion in OpenAI soon.

In an exciting development this past February, Microsoft unveiled a groundbreaking update to its Bing search engine. This update saw the integration of GPT technology into Bing’s search interface, offering users an unparalleled search experience. As a result, millions of users eagerly signed up to be a part of this innovative and cutting-edge technology.

With the release of the highly-anticipated GPT 4 update, Bing has now incorporated the latest and most promising generative LLM capabilities, further enhancing the search engine’s already impressive performance. Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI has given them a clear advantage over their competitors, including Google, and this has significantly increased the likelihood of users choosing Bing over other search engines.

In fact, Google has yet to introduce BARD to their SERPs, which has put them at a disadvantage compared to Bing. With Bing leading the way in terms of incorporating GPT technology into their search engine, Google must ensure that their version of SERP Chat is more advanced and error-free if they want to keep up with their competitors. The competition between these two tech giants has never been more fierce, and it will be interesting to see how they continue to innovate and evolve to provide users with the best possible search experience.

According to Similarweb’s latest 7-day data, Microsoft Bing’s traffic has increased by 15.4%, while Google’s traffic has dropped by 2.4%. Also, over the last month, Bing saw a traffic increase of 13.6% and Google’s traffic lowered by 2.8%

While Bing still has a long way to triumph over Google, its increased traffic and market share are clearly a gain. This also means that websites will start getting more traffic from Bing. 

In fact, it is already happening. The Bing traffic for Stan Ventures has increased, followed by the search engine’s AI integration. Many other online publishers may see something similar happening.

Traffic to ChatGPT-powered Bing is growing fast but not as fast as traffic to ChatGPT itself.

The most recent 7-day traffic of ChatGPT shows a spike of 21.3% from the week before, while the equivalent figure of Bing is 3.9%.

Though this spectacular traffic surge for Bing is a reflection of AI integration, the search engine has been witnessing gains of as much as 10% year-over-year for the last two years. 

At this promising growth rate, it looks like Bing is going to have more exciting times ahead as a top-notch Google alternative.

Bing market share as of December 2022: 8.95%

3. Yahoo Search

The previous search behemoth Yahoo! Search has not given up in the race of the best search engines.

The market share of Yahoo came down from 36.7% in 2001 to 3.18% in 2018 and now to an even abysmal 2.6% in 2022.

The search engine is now powered by Bing, which essentially means Yahoo gives the same results that Bing displays. 

This also means that Yahoo might end up getting an AI integration for its search engine if Bing decides to have one for itself.

That said, it’s hard for Yahoo to make a comeback.

However, it’s important to note that Yahoo was the first search engine that inspired and envisioned the possibilities of the search.

During the initial days, Yahoo worked more like a search directory that required manual entry of the information. 

In 2001, Yahoo approached Inktomi to share its searchable index and then later Google in 2002.

Interestingly, Yahoo never had its own index until it purchased Overture Services, Inc. in 2003, which owned the AlltheWeb and AltaVista search engines by then.

Adding to this, Yahoo was using the Google Search Platform until 2003, which was when it discovered the latter to be a growing threat. 

In 2002, an attempt was made by Yahoo to buy Google.

However, there was an internal disagreement regarding the buyout cost, which was $1 billion.

By the time the red tapes were cleared, the price of Google had rocketed to $3 billion, marking it as the biggest missed-out opportunity of the 21st Century. 

To be frank, Yahoo! seems to have given up the race to become one of the Google alternative search engines.

Yahoo’s market share as of December 2022: 2.6%

4. Baidu

Founded by Robin Li in China, Baidu has a lot of similarities with Google.

Baidu is the top search engine for Chinese citizens as the government has put an indefinite blockade, popularly known as the Great Firewall, on all Google services. 

Currently, Baidu has a market share of 60.87% in China, beating Google and other Chinese search engines such as Sogou and Shenma by miles.

It has to be noted that Bidu had 85% search market in 2021, but Bing and Sogou are putting a tough fight. Together these search engines were able to amass 24% of the market share from Bidu in 2022.

Additionally, Alibaba is putting in a tough fight with Baidu for product related search market.  

Robin Li first came up with a search engine named RankDex in 1996, which used an algorithm similar to Google’s PageRank.

It has to be noted that Larry Page acquired the patent for the PageRank algorithm two years after Li implemented the concept in RankDex. 

Larry had even cited Li in his patent application, which indicated that the real idea came from Li and was emulated to perfection by Google. 

Baidu has been emulating Google, not only with the principle of providing quality search results but also services and features that matter to the users. 

Like Google, Baidu also has a minimalistic homepage. But unlike Google during its formative years, Baidu was selling its space for ads as early as 2004. 

In addition to this, Baidu is also into AI and voice-assisted search and we can possibly see improvements coming in this front in 2023.

Baidu’s Global Search Market Share as of 2022 December: 0.67%

5. DuckDuckGo

If you’re concerned about the privacy of your data, DuckDuckGo is the search engine that you should be using.

Founded by Gabriel Weinberg in 2008, DuckDuckGo has earned itself a name as a non-profit search engine. 

If Google highlights the personalized search experience as its USP, DuckDuckGo does the opposite.

It’s known that Google gives a personalized search experience at the cost of taking advantage of your user data. 

This is exactly what DuckDuckGo doesn’t do.

It doesn’t collect your data, and as a result, the search results remain the same for you and your friends. 

DuckDuckGo has several features including maps, weather, news, images, videos, local business answers, products and shopping, flight information, calculator, sports score, currency conversion and much more.

In addition to these, this search engine also offers language and region localization, customizable themes and shortcut commands that can take you to other websites directly. The search engine also has apps and extensions that allow you to use browsers like Chrome and Safari without being tracked.

According to the official source, the search results provided by DuckDuckGo are generated from 400 different sources (algorithms), including Yahoo! Search, Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing, Yandex, Wikipedia, and its own Web crawler (the DuckDuckBot), and others. 

DuckDuckGo has raised $13 million in funds.

DuckDuckGo users made over 96.97 million search queries in November 2022. It holds 0.58% of the search engine market share worldwide and in the U.S, it holds 2.2% of the search engine market share. The DuckDuckGo Chrome extension app has over six million users.

The way DuckDuckGo is progressing makes us think about the humble beginnings of Google.

Over the years, DuckDuckGo has grown at a steady pace however, things started a little wobbly for this Google alternative search engine starting 2022. 

In January 2022, this privacy-focused search engine completed 100 billion searches. The Twitter account of the search engine thanked its users for the 100 billion all-time private searches. 

Here’s a look at DuckGoDuck’s search trends for 2021.

  • January 2021: 106 million daily searches 
  • February 2021: 105.5 million  daily searches 
  • March 2021: 102.7 million  daily searches 
  • April 2021: 97.7 million  daily searches 
  • May 2021: 96.2 million  daily searches 
  • June 2021: 93.8 million  daily searches
  • July 2021: 92,4 million daily searches
  • August 2021: 93.7 million daily searches
  • September 2021: 94.7 million daily searches
  • October 2021: : 93.7 million daily searches

As you can see the traffic that cross the 100 million mark in January 2021, started declining and this is believed to have continued till June.

When we went back to the public page of DuckDuckGo that shared these details earlier, we found that it no more exists.

However, based on the data retrieved from Web Archive,it looks like the traffic plateaued and have never again touched the 100 million mark.

With this obviously steady decline in searches, the SEO community is speculating if the search engine isn’t competing with Google anymore.

However, it may be too early to jump to conclusions and we’ll have to wait and watch what happens in the months to come. 

The reason behind this increased popularity is the growing concern over privacy. Because of this, enterprises like Google and Apple had to block third-party cookies from tracking the users. 

Privacy has been the primary focus of DuckDuckGo from the start, and it is because of this that they have managed to reach this milestone. 

Compared to Google, this success might seem modest. However, the success of DuckDuckGo has paved the way for other search engines that concentrate on an underserved user base. 

Slowly, these search engines are chipping away at Google’s dominance in the search engine market. 

Even though DuckDuckGo still has miles to go before it can challenge Google, it is gradually closing on other popular search engines like Yahoo! and Bing. 

DuckDuckGo’s market share as of December 2022: 0.84%

6. Yandex

Yandex is the Russian counterpart to Google and going by age, Yandex is much older than Google.

The founders of Yandex – Arkady Volozh and Arkady Borkovsky, came up with the idea of a web search engine software back in 1993.

They named it Yet Another Indexer, which later came to be known as Yandex. 

Looking at history, Yandex was the first search engine that was monetized to sell ads.

They started delivering contextual advertisements on the search engine results page in 1998, two years ahead of Google. 

Yandex is in very close competition with its US-counterpart Google when it comes to the market share.

The Russian Search engine market share is spread more or less equally between Google and Yandex. 

Till December 2021, Yandex had a clear win over Google in Russia.

But since the Russia/Ukraine war that started in Feb 2022, the market share of Google in Russia started declining.

Currently, Google has a search market share of 43.72% when compared to 53.91% of Yandex. 

That means Yandex reclaimed its position as the most used search engine in Russia after a gap of 17 years in 2022. 

Since Google decided to penetrate the Russian search industry, Yandex has been facing intense competition. 

The other competitors, such as the Mail.Ru search engine, are almost obliterated by the competition between the two giants. 

Yandex’s Global Market Share as of December 2022: 1.51%

7. Ask

Ask.com is a question-answering-based search engine that started in 1996.

It was founded by Garret Gruener and David Warthen.Ask.com was previously known as Ask Jeeves, but the name was changed in 2006. 

It lets users see the preview of a web page before they click it, unlike other search engines. 

Headquartered in Oakland, California, Ask.com is currently owned by InterActiveCorp (IAC) under the NASDAQ symbol NASDAQ: IAC

8. Naver

Naver is a South Korean online platform that developed its own search engine in 1999.

It was the world’s first operator to introduce comprehensive search features, such as compiling search results from various categories and listing them on a single page. Naver has introduced a range of new services over the years, starting from news and email to a Q&A platform. 

Naver is frequently referred to as ‘the Google of South Korea’.

9. AOL

AOL is an American web portal based in New York. It was one of the earliest pioneers of the internet in the mid-1990s.

 AOL maintains its own search engine site, called AOL Search, which was revamped and launched on January 20th, 2005. AOL Search engine provides users with access to the web, image, multimedia, shopping, news, and local search results. This page focuses mainly on the web results AOL Search provides.

When displaying results from a search, AOL breaks the page down into the following order from top to bottom: Two search bars (top and bottom of the page), Snapshots (if applicable), Sponsored Links, Matching Sites, and Product Results. 

10. Seznam

Seznam is a web portal and search engine in the Czech Republic.It was founded in 1996 by Ivo Lukačovič as the first web portal in the Czech Republic.

More Google Alternative Search Engines

11. Yippy

Yippy is not a conventional search engine but rather, a Deep Web-based search engine.

We know that thousands of websites fail to get indexed by Google and other popular search engines.

Yippy uses the data from Deep Web to find and index pages that otherwise go unnoticed. 

Yippy is a good example of a metasearch engine as it uses the user search query to take inputs from a user and immediately queries search engines for results.

Interestingly, Yippy provides results in a cluster format, which allows users to filter the results based on different subsects. 

If you’re looking for information that you feel may be only available on the Deep Web, Yippy is a search engine that you should consider.

12. CC Search

CC Search is a search engine tool that lets people discover public domain and openly licensed works online.

It was founded in 2001 and launched its first license in 2002.

Creative Commons is the non-profit behind CC Search.

They make licenses that have been used more than one and a half billion times to help creators share their creative knowledge online.

This is an ideal search engine for those who want to use images from the web without getting hit by copyright claims.

The search engine draws its results from sites like Behance, Flickr, and Thingiverse to display the Creative Commons material in the results.

13. Gibiru

Gibiru private search engine was founded in 2009 and it is a web browser that allows users to conduct private searches without tracking their online activities.

The browser doesn’t log IP addresses or place cookies on computers, which means there’s no data that can be sold to advertisers.

Hence users using the Gibiru search browser are free to access the web without worrying about getting their browsing activities or other online information tracked.

14. Amazon

Between 2015 and 2018, Amazon’s growth increased from 46% to 54%, beating Google.

While Google strives to offer the best results based on what users might want to know, Amazon showcases its search results based on what users want to buy. Amazon search results are driven by its own algorithm, known as the A9 algorithm.

It is said that Amazon’s A9 algorithm works on sales velocity.

Sales volume is the speed or velocity at which products are sold on the Amazon platform.

Amazon is soon surpassing Google as the most used search engine for product-related search and the arena has been set for really tough competition between these giants.

If you ask me, Amazon is the best Google alternative search engine for product search and with more retailers signing up with the marketplace of Jeff Bezos-company, you can find better product search results on Amazon.

15. Search Encrypt

Search Encrypt is a privacy-based search engine that allows users to browse the web without compromising on the user’s personal information.

It was founded in 2016 by a team of developers who noticed how big search engines store personal information and browsing details about the users and felt the need to create a private search engine.

The browser uses local encryption to provide an additional layer of protection.

This is done by transmitting the search terms by the users to the browser’s servers in encrypted form and are decrypted and sent through their private search engine.

16. StartPage

StartPage is yet another private search engine founded in 2006 that offers users an entirely private browsing experience that doesn’t let companies mine your personal data or allow cookies to hamper your browsing experience.

The “Anonymous view” feature of this browser lets you go completely private with your search activities.

Startpage search is held by Startpage BV privately and is among the best search engines for privacy.

The browser is based in Europe, a place where privacy laws are among the most stringent in the world.

17. Swisscows

Swisscows is a private browser founded in 2009.

It doesn’t store your data and offer your complete privacy.

It also pays great importance to family-friendly content and keeps a check on the type of content displayed on the web to the children.

Violence and pornography are strictly prohibited for individuals below 18 years of age.

Unlike other search engine giants that store your information and manipulate your online behavior, Swisscow offers you quick search results with 100% privacy.

18. Ecosia

Ecosia is an environment-friendly search engine that uses revenues generated from search engine queries to plant trees.

It was founded on 7th December 2009.

Typically the Ecosia team plants a tree per 45 searches.

They produce their monthly financial reports so that users can see where the revenue generated from their searches go exactly.

The browser’s servers run on 100% renewable energy and don’t encourage third-party trackers or sell data to advertisers.

19. Gigablast

Gigablast is a free and open-source English search engine founded in 2000.

The search engine was founded by Matt Wells in New Mexico, who created it to index billions of pages on the internet using the minimum hardware possible.

It claims to be one of the leading clean energy search engines with 90% of its power derived from wind energy.

The search engine has the ability to generate topics and index multiple document formats.

It also supports a blog-search feature along with a related concept feature named “Gigabits”.

Gigabits offers related information in addition to the original search result.

The source code of this search engine is written in C+ and C++ programming languages.

20. Lycos

Lycos is a web search engine founded in 1995 by Bob Davis.

The search engine covers a network of web hosting, social networking, email, and entertainment websites.

Lycos Network sites include “Angelfire.com” and “Tripod.com”, which offer free web hosting, blogging, and publishing tools.

Lycos became a popular search engine platform between 1990 and 2001.

Besides conducting web searches, you can also browse thousands of online games using this fast and reliable search engine.

You can also compare the prices of products across various online shopping sites using the Lycos web search.

The search engine also encourages advertisement opportunities for businesses.

21. Mojeek

Mojeek is a UK-based web search engine.

It displays search results by indexing web pages on its own. It was created in 2004 by Marc Smith.

In 2006, it became the first search engine with a no activity tracking policy and is still applicable to this day.

Mojeek has indexed more than 2 billion pages so far and is hosted by UK’s greenest data center.

In 2017, Mojeek collaborated with EMRAYS Technology to introduce an emotion-based search engine that allowed users to browse content with emotional values.

22. Searx

Searx is a free metasearch engine that protects the privacy of users.

Adam Tauber developed it in 2014.

It can fetch search results from 82 different browsers across all categories.

The search engine for a query can be specified via a “preference” interface.

The search results shown in Searx can be modified in 20 different languages as well.

Searx doesn’t share the IP address or browsing history with the search engines from whether it gathers results to display.

The tracking cookies are blocked by Searx which prevents user-profiling-based result modification.

The user query keywords are prevented from appearing in the web server logs by submitting them via HTTP POST.

23. WebCrawler

WebCrawler is the oldest surviving web search engine of the present time.

It was launched in 1994 and was one of the first web search engines to provide full-text search.

The search engine is currently run by InfoSpace as a meta-search tool, combining results from different search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask, Live Search, and others.

24. WolframAlpha

WolframAlpha is a computational knowledge engine developed by a subsidiary of Wolfram Research.

It was launched in May 2009.

The search engine answer queries directly by curating data from external sources rather than working like a typical search engine, which offers a list of sites that might answer your search query.

The search engine can only provide answers to question-based computational queries and doesn’t work for search queries that need elaborate answers.

25. Neeva

Neeva is a search engine developed by an ex-Google executive, Sridhar Ramaswamy. Unlike Google, Neeva will not show ads on the search result page or collect user data for profit.

It will work on a subscription-based model and will display search results curated from the web as well as personalized files.

The search engine will be powered by Microsoft Bing, weather information from weather.com, stock data from Intrinio, maps from Apple.

 Neeva has launched a free basic subscription as an alternative to its full-featured subscription costing $4.95 per month. 

Both subscriptions are currently only available to US users. Free subscribers can access Neeva’s ad-free search engine with limited customizations, however.

The premium subscription additionally includes access to Neeva’s latest search features, access to a monthly Q&A with the founders, membership in a Neeva-hosted community, and additional privacy tools.

26. MetaGer

MetaGer is a metasearch engine based in Germany. It was launched in 1996. It extracts search results from multiple search engines, which are filtered and compiled before presenting them to the users. The search engine provides access to its services only through encrypted connections to protect the privacy of the users.

27. Qwant

Quant is a search engine founded in 2013. It is one of the few European Union-based search engine companies that has its own indexing engine. It doesn’t collect user data and avoids personalizing user experience in order to avoid trapping users in a filter bubble. The search engine is available in 26 languages. Qwant processes over 10 million search queries every day. As of March 2019, Qwant is the 86th most visited website in France.

28. Qmamu

Qmamu is a privacy-based search engine.

It is India’s first private search engine in 2021.

The search engine allows you to browse anything using its powerful and smooth interface.

Using this search engine, you get easy access to private browsing, voice search, and other useful functionalities.

29. You

You.com is the latest addition to the list of public search engines. it claims itself to be the world’s first open search engine.

You.com co-founder and CEO, Richard Socher, said that the company uses technology to help people live better and more productively.

This search engine leverages NLP to understand search queries, rank the results and semantically parse the queries into different languages.

The platform offers “zero traces” incognito mode for the complete privacy of the users and doesn’t sell personal information to third parties.

The search engine is currently ad-free, which enables companies to contribute their most useful actual content to that first page, unlike popular search engines that mostly contain ads on the first page.

You.com operates in two modes — personal and private. In the personal mode, users can create an account and set their source preferences from across 150+ different environments. If you want more Reddit or Twitter sources in your search results, you can set that as a preference. 

The private mode offers the most private search experience of any search engine. In private mode, You.com never stores your queries, preferences, or locations. That also means that localized queries won’t work. 

You.com also has AI features such as YouWrite app, which is a writing assistant that appears in the search results that can generate text in seconds. You can also go to you.com/write or search for a blank page problem such as “how to write a blog.” 

In addition, the search engine also offers several time-saving apps for developers in its YouCode mode that lets them search the most relevant sites for coding, format JSON files, and also access an AI coding assistant called Code Complete that can autocomplete a coding related query and generate code. 

You.com now offers a whole new level of search engine experience with the latest addition – the AI-powered chatbot, YouChat! This innovative tool is among the first to integrate AI with the internet, providing users with a seamless and more efficient way to find answers to their queries.

With YouChat, you no longer have to sift through countless search results to find the information you need. This clever chatbot not only provides answers in a concise and summarised paragraph but also cites the sources from where it retrieved the information. Talk about thoroughness and accuracy!

But YouChat isn’t just any ordinary chatbot. It excels in maintaining conversations and can even answer logical reasoning questions. So, if you’re tired of the same old cut-off from ChatGPT, YouChat is the perfect alternative to get real-time data and answers that are both comprehensive and engaging.

With YouChat, you can enjoy the benefits of a traditional search engine and a chatbot all in one! So, what are you waiting for? Give it a try and see for yourself how YouChat can revolutionize the way you search the internet.

30. Oscobo

Oscobo is an alternative search engine to Google. It is created for the sole purpose of protecting the user’s privacy when they search on the web. The search engine doesn’t store your personal information and will never ask its users to provide their personal information in order to access its services. All traffic coming through Oscobo’s search engine is SSL encrypted. It doesn’t use any third-party analytics on its search engine to prevent user activity tracking. The browser also doesn’t show your search in the page title or meta information so it never shows up in your browser history

31. Infinity Search 

Infinity Search is a search engine that aims to offer you a customizable and efficient navigation experience. Infinity Search is part of Innovare Technologies and is based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. When you search something on the browser, it collects information from its own indexes and other search engines and then organizes them to present it to you without you needing to log in or provide any personal information to browse. You can easily customize your browsing experience on this search engine by setting your own CSS and blacklisting websites you don’t want to show up in the search results.

32. YEP

YEP, launched in June 2022, comes from the house of the popular SEO tool Ahrefs, and is founded by Dmitry Gerasimenko. Ahrefs has been crawling the web since 2010 and that means their bots have been collecting the details required for starting a search engine for a long time.

However, YEP is trying to position itself as an alternative search engine that aims to support good content by offering a 90% share of the advertising profit with content creators. Additionally, YEP also boasts itself as a private search engine that will not collect or share user data nor track the users and their search history.

We know that Google is currently giving just 51% of the profit share to the content creators, and that means it’s earning 100 billion a year just 51 billion is shared with the creators. What this means is that, just because people used Google to find the content, the platform is taking 49% of money, which is pretty unfair from a content creators perspective.

However, with YEP, if they manage to earn $100 billion a year, $90 billion will reach content creators and publishers. This way, YEP intends to make the web a better place as content creators no longer have to use paywalls or ask for donations for sustaining a website.

What we know is that YEP’s algorithm is focused on finding the high-quality content created by experts, independent journalists and passionate individuals. Also, the search engine is using AhrefsBot as of now to get the pages indexed. However, the company is mulling switching to YepBot soon.

According to confirmed reports, Ahrefs has invested a total of $60M in developing the new creator-friendly search engine.

33. Anoox 

According to confirmed reports, Ahrefs has invested a total of $60M in developing the new creator-friendly search engine.

Anoox is a Collective Search Engine that combines crowd wisdom of people, which means the results are displayed based on what people think, buy and vote for on the Anoox social network.

The search engine boasts about its People over Profit approach and safeguarding privacy by not tracking the users’ search history.

Anoox search engine works based on people’s votes on each result displayed. The people who join Anoox’s social platform can upvote and downvote the displayed results. When more people upvote a particular result, the rankings improve, and when voted down, rankings will drop.

The users can also leave a review for the search listings and also add websites to Anoox’s index.

Social Network-Specific Advance Search Engines

34. Facebook Search

Facebook Search retrieves only content within its platform that is shared and posted on Facebook.

It relies on keywords to show you the most relevant results. You can use Facebook search to look for the following types of content on the platform: 

  • Marketplace posts
  • Images
  • Videos
  • Groups
  • Apps
  • Events
  • Posts
  • Links

35. LinkedIn

LinkedIn People Search

You can use the Linkedin People search to find any professional on the platform and connect with them. 

LinkedIn Job Search

You can use the Linkedin Job search to find job offers and vacancy posts on the platform and apply for them.

LinkedIn Answers Search

There’s a great depth of knowledge that’s already been collected within LinkedIn Answers. You can use the pull-down in the search box to search LinkedIn Answers from most pages on the site.

36. Twitter

On average, about 6,000 tweets are made every second on Twitter, which means that more than 500 million tweets are made every single day. And with the built-in search functionality, you can find the information you want and explore the site.

Another amazing and little-known tool from Twitter is the Advance Search. It overs more than dozen ways to search, filter, and segment huge amounts of tweets and profiles.It can be accessed by heading to http://twitter.com/search-advanced. This tool is a goldmine for small business owners and marketers.

37. Brave

Brave Search is an independent search engine released in March 2021 that offers complete privacy protection to users.

It is available in beta release globally on all Brave browsers (desktop, Android, and iOS). Brave Search beta is built on top of a completely independent index that doesn’t track users or their search activities. Brave has its own search index for answering common queries privately without reliance on other providers. 

Image Search Engines

38. Flickr

Flickr is an image and video hosting company based in America. It was created in 2004 by Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake. Flickr is a top-rated image hosting platform for amateur and expert photographers around the world. Images and videos can be accessed on Flickr for free and without having to create an account on the platform. However, if somebody wants to upload images or videos on the site, they need to create an account. Flickr is available as a mobile app for Android and iOS devices.

39. Pinterest

Pinterest is an image-sharing social media platform that allows users to save and discover images, gifs, and video clips on the web. It was founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann, Paul Sciarra, and Evan Sharp. Pinterest consist of pins, which are visuals uploaded to the site or linked from another site. A group of collected pins is categorized in a board, which can be repinned by other users if they choose to share your collection. The Pinterest visual search service was introduced in 2017, where users can search for an image’s elements from the Pinterest database.

40. Bing Image

Bing’s image search is an advance search feature that allows users to find images using advanced filters and conduct custom visual searches. You can view Bing’s image search history by logging into the platform.

41. Google Image

Google’s image search allows users to browse the world wide web for images. It was introduced in 2001. 

A reverse image search functionality was also added to Google image search in 2011, where you can search with a picture to find its original source, other dimensions of the same picture, and images that are similar to it. 

42. TinEye

TinEye is a reverse image search engine based in Toronto.

It is the first image search engine on the web that uses image identification technology to retrieve results instead of keywords.

Users can upload images within 20 MB on the site or provide an URL of the image in the search engine. TinEye will return with the details of the image where it has been used, including the date and time of upload.

TinEye can find images in JPEG, GIF, or PNG format. It is a useful tool for people to find all sorts of image copyright infringements.

43. Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons is an online directory of free-to-use images, sound clips, and other forms of media.

It was launched in 2004.

Currently, there are more than 60 million free media files available to use in the Wikimedia Commons database.

The free search engine has three major techniques to recognize quality works.

The first category is known as “Featured pictures,” where works are nominated and community members are asked to vote to accept or reject the nominations.

The second category is “Quality images” which only features works by Wikimedia users. The last category is “Valued Images” which recognizes the most valued images in a particular category. 

Video Search Engine List

44. YouTube

YouTube is a video-sharing platform. It was started by former PayPal employees-Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005.

A year later the platform was bought by Google and it now works as one of Google’s subsidiaries. 

YouTube has over 2 billion users, which roughly equates to one-third of the people on the internet.

Youtube’s ranking is the second biggest search engine after Google and surpasses the popularity of Bing, Yahoo & Ask combined.

It is also the top search engine which it comes to video-related search, which is yet to face stiff competition from other players like Vimeo and Facebook Video. 

The versatility of YouTube makes it available in more than 80 different languages in 91 countries. 

With more than 70% of views coming through mobile devices, YouTube is a popular search engine for video.

Using this platform, users can not only view videos from all over the world but also upload and stream them to other users. 

45. Dailymotion

Dailymotion is a French video-sharing platform founded in 2005. It was founded by Benjamin Bejbaum and Olivier Poitrey.

Dailymotion is available in 43 countries so far.

The platform allows video creators to share their recorded or live videos online and attracts 300 million users worldwide.

The content upload policies on Dailymotion are not as stringent as YouTube, hence the users are at low risk of getting their content taken down or banned permanently from the platform. 

46. Vimeo

Vimeo is a video service platform for hosting and sharing videos.

It was founded in 2004. It is an ad-free video platform that derives its majority of revenue from subscription-based video content and offers Saas with video creation, editing, and broadcasting tools.

Vimeo is focused on delivering HD videos across a range of devices. 

47. LBRY

LBRY is a digital library where you can find videos, music, ebooks, and other useful multimedia resources.

It is a protocol that allows anyone to build apps that interact with the digital content available on the LBRY network.

Apps built using the protocol allow users to upload their work on the LBRY network of hosts and set a price for stream or provide it for free.  

48. PeerTube

PeerTube is an open-source video platform.

This free platform uses peer-to-peer technology to reduce the load on individual servers when viewing videos.

It was released in March 2018.

The platform uses WebTorrent technology.

49. DTube

DTube is a crypto-decentralized video sharing platform, which was started as an alternative search engine to YouTube.

Due to the decentralized nature of the platform, DTube is unable to censor videos or enforce guidelines.

Users can censor the videos through their upvotes or downvotes.

All the data on DTube is public and can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection.

DTube also runs ads-free, however, users can run ads within their content at their own risk.

50. BitTube

BitTube is a crypto-decentralized YouTube alternative search engine. It was founded by Halsey Minor. Video producers can publish work free from censorship on BitTube and receive payment from viewers in the form of cryptocurrency, also known as BitTube coins on the platform. The platform also has a feature called “AirTime,” where it rewards creators and viewers based on times watched. 

51. BitChute

BitChute video hosting platform launched in 2017 by Ray Vahey. It was created to allow people to upload their videos without following the strict guidelines laid by YouTube.  The content available on this platform is highly political. The platform claims to use peer-to-peer WebTorrent technology. 

52. Twitch

Twitch is a popular platform for live streaming games and is well-known among youngsters. Gamers also use this platform to connect with other gamers and share tips, tricks, and hacks for gaming. The platform has approximately 15 million monthly users. 

53. MetaCafe

Metacafe is a video hosting site founded in 2003. It is an alternative search engine to the popular video platform YouTube and specializes in short-form video content. It contains videos from categories such as movies, video games, sports, music, and TV, which can be viewed for free on the platform.

54. The Internet Archive

The Internet Archive is a non-profit online library that allows free access to millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. You can upload videos to this site using the common video coding format, H.264. The site has a vast collection of historical content hard to find elsewhere on the internet.

These are the top search engines that you can use to search for things on the internet in the coming year. If you ask “what is the best search engine among these?” You will easily get Google as the answer out of the list of top search engines we’ve provided.

However, nobody knows what the future holds. You might see some of these search engines raise their rank and get popular among people.

55. Perplexity AI

Aravind Srinivas, co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI says, “Perplexity AI is an answer engine that delivers accurate answers to complex questions using large language models.” It is a conversational search engine that returns answers for user queries using a chatbot-like interface and large language model (LLM) similar to ChatGPT.

What sets this AI search engine apart from ChatGPT is that when answering user queries, Perplexiet AI generates footnotes that contain links to the sources based on which it came up with the content.

Something like this.

This way, this AI search engine allows users to explore the primary sources based on which the content is pulled up and cross-verify them for accuracy. That’s something ChatGPT falls short of at the moment.

Plus, this AI-powered search tool also provides you with suggestions related to your search. So, you get more related leads based on which you can expand your search and get more information on any particular topic.

Perplexity AI’s BirdSQL feature helps answer queries based on Twitter graphs using its natural language processing capabilities. BirdSQL is built on the large language model of OpenAI’s API, Twitter API, and PostgresSQL.

This feature comes in handy to tap into Twitter trends in a hassle-free way. With this, you can search and find specific posts on Twitter. You can also search for tweets of a particular individual and also narrow down tweets based on likes and number of retweets.

Despite its advanced machine learning capabilities, this chatbot-style AI search engine does have certain limitations. One, their Twitter data may not be up to date. Two, this chatbot-style AI search engine only supports graph queries and exact text queries as of now.

As Perplexity AI themselves say, ” Our Twitter data is incomplete: not all users and tweets are available. Only graph queries and exact text search queries are currently supported.”

56. Waldo

Waldo – the search engine that’s named after the beloved game “Where’s Waldo.” This search tool has been taking the internet by storm for over six months, and once you try it, you’ll see why it’s truly one-of-a-kind.

Waldo does things a little differently. Instead of just presenting search results, it packages them in a clean, user-friendly interface that’s optimized just for you. You can easily filter results by date, type, and source to find exactly what you need. And with shortcuts that highlight important information and allow you to download files in various formats, Waldo truly takes the research game to the next level.

But what sets Waldo apart is its unique approach to search. It’s not just a tool for finding information – it’s a research companion that can help you navigate the vast sea of the internet. With Waldo, you’ll feel like you have a personalized research assistant by your side, helping you every step of the way.

And the best part? Waldo is available not only as a Chrome extension but also as a website and on mobile devices, making it accessible from anywhere, anytime.

So why settle for a mundane search engine experience when you can have the excitement and efficiency of Waldo? Try it today and see for yourself why it’s quickly becoming the talk of the town (or rather, the internet).

Author

Dileep Thekkethil

With over 12 years of expertise, Dileep has carved a name for himself as a trailblazer in the SEO industry. As an acclaimed author and relentless learner, he has transformed countless websites with tailored digital marketing strategies, thanks to his profound insights and innovative approach. Dileep's passion for staying ahead of the curve is evident in his contributions to Stan Ventures and the 100+ publications that feature his groundbreaking articles on SEO and digital marketing. His dedication to knowledge-sharing has earned him widespread recognition as a go-to expert in the field. For cutting-edge SEO solutions or to delve into the mind of a true digital marketing virtuoso, connect with Dileep through the links provided below. @Mail | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook or View all posts by Dileep

Comments

48 thoughts on “Search Engines: 56 Google Alternatives for 2023

  1. Holla,
    You have given detailed information about all the search engines along with all the metrics. So, do you think that in the future may be due to lot of ads or other promotional activities Google might come down in the market and other search engines may take its place?

    1. See no king has ruled forever. If the likes of DuckDuck and Bing can make significant changes to the search engine may be. Also, a few allied services are necessary. In that case, I think Apple has more chance of beating Google. The whole ecosystem thing is worth noting.

  2. Thanks for sharing an informative post, I have a small doubt, if I optimize my website for Google search engine it can rank for other search engine or I have to optimize for all search engines like I have to submit my website for all. Like Google search console every search engine has similar tools and has to verify??

    1. Hi Sean,
      Yes a few search engines have a console of there own but some don’t. You can submit the domain and there is a likely chance that the crawl rate will increase. However, ranking is a different thing altogether. Each search engine has its own algorithm and metrics to gauge the quality of a website.

  3. Hi Dileep,
    I was pleased to find an excellent website like stanventures.com. All your blogs are well written. Sometimes the simplest things mean the most. I want to thank you for this wonderful article.
    I have heard that “Amazon is a Growing Threat to Google.”Even though Amazon’s platform is tiny compared to Facebook and Google, it is growing faster than it’s competitors. May I know the reason why you have not mentioned Amazon on this list. And also, is there any chance of Google getting replaced by Amazon in the top search engines in the upcoming years?

    1. Hi Estelle,
      We are constantly updating this blog and as you can see, Amazon is now on the list. Thank you for the suggestions.

  4. Great post about search engine list, Unlike Google, tracks the user data through cookies in your browser to show interest-based ads. This is the main reason we get ads through Google Adsense, Facebook or other platform based on your browsing.
    If DuckDuckGo doesn’t collect your data then how they are earning through ads or how the can show relevant ads to users?

    1. Hi Antwan,
      I’m not sure about this but search queries may be the reason why ads are being triggered.

  5. Hi Dileep,
    I am thinking to run a paid ad campaign, which platform do you suggest? I want good results with a low budget. Which platform will give me the best ROI?

  6. Hello Dileep,
    Such a great post about the search engine and its analysis. Do have done an in-depth analysis of this.
    Google is always on top of all the search engine list. Thanks for sharing this informative article.
    Keep sharing..

  7. Thank you for the interesting and informative article. I appreciate the research work that you did and I am grateful you shared so many search engine alternatives with all the details.

  8. So many to choose from and Google got lazy with a lot of ads and other activities not fun anymore. Thanks for posting this list. There are a few I’ve never heard of that I look forward to trying out.

  9. I think DuckDuckGo is going to compete with Google in the future because It doesn’t collect user’s data and use it. It is a growing search engine, in 2020 it going to have more global search market share. What do you think?

  10. If you are unwilling to trade privacy for convenience or have specific search needs, there are a number of Google alternatives that offer a better search experience.

  11. Tons missed…msn , Hotmail , ask , chrome , internet explorer, safari , Wikipedia, Mozilla Firefox …tons more also…

  12. Hi Dileep : Great list – thanks for taking the time to compile and briefly explain each one. Just wanted to mention our new search engine, Inquisim which launched this year. Inquisim combines the best features of others : Similar to DDG, no tracking and personal data collection. Like Neeva, there are no advertisements. And from Brave, it has it’s own independently created database. Best of all, it’s free to use for everyone.

  13. This thing in Ukraine has exposed the fact that almost every so-called search engine is useless, unless you want western friendly results. I tried gibiru just to see how they differed. They didn’t, differ that is. It made no difference how I changed the search terms, I kept getting the same unrelated (to my query) results. At this time I seriously doubt there is an actual independent and reliable search engine in existence. DDG is crap as well, proof? They stated they are removing certain results…ostensibly using the same reasoning as google…we’re too stupid to figure things out on our own. Most engines rely on Google/Bing? Yes and it shows. So far I have tried 10 different engines, all supposedly independent, yet the same ignominious results. If you don’t believe it, search for ANY Russian general for the time period 2014 and see what you get. Every result is for the Ukraine war, not 2014. Every result basically says Russians bad.

  14. Very informative article
    You know that I have been finding such like this helpful post that can provide me that which search engine is getting more popular after google.

  15. Hi Dileep Thekkethil, Thank yyou so much for the information. I have a question, Which search engine will beat Google ?

    1. Show me a wormhole into the future, may be I can give you an answer. Jokes apart, I think Bing with open ai integration may be able to get a bit more search market share in the coming years. It’s too early to predict if it can beat Google.

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