Oneupweb’s Search Engine Guide

Organic search shapes how the world organizes and accesses information, consumes media and transacts billions of dollars of economic activity every day.

Don’t believe us?

Google it.

While only one search engine has become a verb, marketers should have an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of all search engines to understand why some audiences prefer one over the other.

Tapping into Oneupweb’s SEO, content and paid media teams, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide to the most popular search engines in the world.

Read on to find out what Bing does best, where Google’s AI push is headed and everything you need to maximize your company’s organic impact.

First, What Is a Search Engine?

A search engine is a web-based tool that helps people find information on the internet. The user types a word or phrase (also called a query, keyword, or key phrase) into the search engine, and the search engine finds and presents the content relevant to the user’s query.

Content is displayed on a search engine results page (SERP). The search engine’s algorithm and a company’s SEO efforts determine what content it serves and in what order.

How Do Search Engines Work?

At the heart of any search engine is an algorithm. Thousands of engineers create and test thousands of factors that impact how specific links are served to users on the SERP. From keywords to technical site structure, site size and backlinks, no one truly knows all of the variables or how much weight is assigned to each variable. Yet, the algorithm(s) determine the search results.

To make it even more interesting, the SERP is constantly changing. Search engines introduce new features and run algorithm updates constantly, which can have seismic changes on a domain’s organic traffic—or none at all.

The SEOs at Oneupweb are constantly tracking and comparing keyword and organic traffic fluctuations to spot trends and opportunities, such as testing jump links or optimizing huge swathes of a website at once. Keeping up with a single platform is tough, but we make a similar effort across search engines – it’s a full-time job.

Market Snapshot: Search Engine Market Share

There’s a reason Google is a perfectly acceptable verb. While it wasn’t the first search engine, its clean user interface and exceptional results made it absolutely dominant just as the global economy recovered after the Great Recession and businesses doubled down online.

Google’s organic search market share peaked in November 2018 at 91.46%, but it’s steadily lost ground since. Its share of the pie dipped as low as  83.5% in July 2023, and with consumers looking for more privacy and AI-powered search engine results, Google’s future is far from the lock it has been historically.  

As of January 2024, here are the top five search engines by US market share:

• Google – 87.5%
• Bing – 7.9%
• Yahoo! – 2.3%
• DuckDuckGo – 1.9%
• YANDEX – 0.2%

Meet the Search Engines: A Guide

We’re walking through several search engines to show what they do best, who tends to use them and where they come up short.

Google

• Worldwide market share January 2024: 87.5%
• Founded: September 4, 1998
• CEO: Sundar Pichai

Google’s dominance has raised plenty of legal questions over the past decade, including a landmark civil antitrust suit from the US Department of Justice in 2023, plus a steady drumbeat of charges alleging privacy violations from European legislators.

Unique Features: Google’s Generative AI feature conducts research based on the given query, summarizes that research and provides source links at the top of the SERP. Some users may find this helpful; however, it creates another challenge for SEO and paid marketing because this pushes paid ads, organic results and SERP features further down the page.

Benefits: Its sheer size and overwhelming market share make Google an easy choice for both organic and paid marketing. A wide variety of SERP features make it easy for users to find information quickly without leaving the SERP.

Weaknesses: Google indexes hundreds of billions of web pages, which means competition is fierce. It can be extremely difficult to get a page to rank well on Google for certain keywords. Google has been (much) slower than its competitors to provide privacy features and protect user data, which could impact user demographics for brands in tech-led industries, such as SaaS.

User Demographics: Google is the most commonly used search engine for users aged 18-44.

Bing

• Worldwide market share January 2024: 3.4%
• Debuted: June 1, 2009
• CEO: Satya Nadella (Microsoft)

Microsoft is one of the world’s most valuable companies, but it’s been behind Google in organic search from Day One. When then-CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled Bing in 2009, Microsoft hoped to capture a sizeable chunk of the market thanks to its hardware advantage; almost every PC in the world ships with Microsoft software and search pre-installed.

So far, Bing has only captured a small fraction of the search market pie. However, that doesn’t accurately reflect how pervasive the tool has become.

Bing also powers searches conducted through other programs, such as:

• Microsoft Cortana
• Microsoft Edge
• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Outlook
• Microsoft Word
• Microsoft Excel
• Microsoft Teams
• Skype
• Xbox
• Amazon Alexa
• Dozens of other search engines, including Yahoo!, AOL, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and more

Unique Features: Bing’s AI Chat tool (currently only available in Microsoft Edge) combines conversational chat features with AI to provide the user with tailored search results and summaries.

Benefits: Bing’s Image Search offers better images and vastly superior filtering capabilities than Google. Also, Bing allows users to play full videos right on the SERP without clicking through to the source page. As more users adjust to using AI-powered search engines, Bing’s seamless integration of Microsoft products makes it a serious player for organizations and individuals looking to increase productivity.

Weaknesses: Perhaps Bing’s biggest weakness is a human one; habits. Google has become the automated search reflex for at least three generations. It will need to differentiate itself from Google where it matters most, which appears to be privacy and artificial intelligence.

User Demographics: Bing is most popular among users aged 45-64.

Yandex

• Worldwide market share January 2024: 1.8%
• Founded: September 23, 1997
• Ownership: A consortium of Russian investors

Yandex was founded in 1997 and became a publicly traded company in 2011. Its tongue-in-cheek name (a play on “Yet Another Indexer”) is a lock in Russia, where it beats Google in market share.

Unique Features: Do you miss SERPs displaying a list of blue links? Yandex delivers. While it’s limited compared to other SERPs, Yandex offers a cleaner look than Google or Bing, which may be appealing to those who are not interested in things like SERP features.

If you aren’t happy with Yandex’s results, you can click over to Google or Bing at the bottom of the Yandex SERP. Convenient!

Benefits: For marketers, Yandex is a great way to compare results for a particular query across several SERPs quickly. Unless your target audience is in the Russian sphere of influence (and isn’t under embargo), that might be the best reason to use Yandex.

Weaknesses: Yandex had a 71.28% market share in Russia in January 2024, compared to Google’s 27.3%, but its American reach remains minuscule.

User Demographics: US demographics are hard to find, but Statista reports that a third of Russian Yandex users are aged 55+.

Yahoo!

• Worldwide market share January 2024: 1.1%
• Founded: January 1994
• CEO: Jim Lanzone

Once the king of organic search, Yahoo! famously turned down the chance to buy Google for $1 million in 1998. Within a decade, Google had surpassed Yahoo! as the leading search engine, leaving Google to spend the next decade experimenting with new identities and markets. Today, Yahoo! Considers itself a “web portal,” where search appears alongside email, entertainment and other content its users like having all in one place.

Unique Features: Yahoo! uses Bing to power its search engine but reserves the right to adjust results based on its own criteria. Yahoo! does a solid job with image search, though it would be a stretch to call it the industry leader. Like Yandex, Yahoo! is link-heavy, with fewer on-page SERP features than Google or Bing.

Benefits: For marketers, there may not be any standout benefits to Yahoo!, but it’s worth noting any fluctuations in Yahoo! results to spot user trends and new opportunities.

Weaknesses: Like your favorite SEO and Content Marketing manager, it may have peaked in 2007. Yahoo!’s market share has been in the low single digits for a decade, and there are no obvious avenues for growth, especially as its larger (and well-financed) rivals spend big on AI.

User Demographics: Yahoo! is most popular with the 65+ age group.

DuckDuckGo

• Worldwide market share January 2024: 0.5%
• Founded: February 28. 2008
• CEO: Gabriel Weinberg

Call DuckDuckGo the privacy pioneer. Founder Gabriel Weinberg was protecting user data before it was cool; the search engine doesn’t track search history, doesn’t use third-party cookies or leverage user data for advertising. Until recently, DuckDuckGo was probably the best search engine for privacy, though rivals have largely caught up.

Unique Features: DuckDuckGo has engineered a whole library of browser extensions designed to extend its privacy settings to other tools. Love Google? You can install a DuckDuckGo extension to block cookies, protect your email and keep search history private.

Benefits: As we’ve noted, competitors have made up a lot of privacy ground, but DuckDuckGo is the safest search engine available. If privacy matters to you and your audience, this is your jam.

Weaknesses: DuckDuckGo’s strength is also its weakness. Because it doesn’t collect user data, it delivers generalized results that are notably weak on local search, news and other topics that are better with a personal touch.

User Demographics: DuckDuckGo is most popular with users in the 25-34 age group.

Baidu

• Worldwide market share January 2024: 0.8%
• Founded: January 1, 2000
• CEO: Robin Li

Baidu is China’s largest search engine, claiming 61% of the Chinese search market in January 2024. The key to its success? Banning Google. While technically a publicly traded company since 2005, Baidu is closely regulated by the Chinese government and plays by very different rules in different parts of the world. Outside of China, it’s not terribly competitive, but with 218 million daily users, it ain’t nothing.

Unique Features: Do you like Google but can’t use it because you’re in China? Baidu offers nearly every product or service Google does, but you can use it in China. We’ll call that its unique feature.

Benefits: It’s extremely good at Chinese search results. (See also: weaknesses)

Weaknesses: To rank on Baidu, a website must have a Mandarin-language version. This makes it incredibly difficult for many Western websites to achieve success on Baidu. If you (or your customers) don’t speak Mandarin, Baidu forces users to install a translation plug-in that’s iffy, at best.

User Demographics: US demographics are elusive, but about a third of Chinese Baidu users are aged 25-34.

Other Search Engines (Or, Search Engines by Another Name)

People search everywhere online now, and some of the most valuable queries aren’t coming from traditional search engines.

Ecommerce platforms like Amazon and Walmart receive over 2 billion site searches per day, while video platform YouTube picks up over 3 billion. Almost 75% of Gen Z uses TikTok to search for information and 51% prefer TikTok over Google.

More than ever, the search experience is multichannel, combining organic search and platform-specific habits – and it’s all constantly being tweaked by search companies.

Own Your SERP Presence with Oneupweb

For any business, organic search is key to brand awareness, quality site sessions and organizational growth. Marketers need to take a hard look at each organic channel to evaluate opportunities and diversify traffic acquisition over time. Tag in Oneupweb; we bring over 25 years of market experience and vertically integrated resources to level up your marketing efforts.

Get in touch or call (231) 922-9977 to get started!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the safest search engine?

Competitors like Google are getting closer, but DuckDuckGo is still considered the safest search engine by most industry experts.

Do different search engines give different results?

Search engines often serve different results based on privacy settings (including your location), search history, and differences in their algorithms. There is substantial research into how different search engine results may exacerbate systemic biases.

What search engine does Safari use?

Safari is the browser that comes installed on iPhones, and Google is the default search engine for Safari.