Search Engines

Ever wondered about the world beyond Google search engine?

I was reading about the recent market share increment in Microsoft search engine provider Bing when I recalled about China’s Baidu, which made me curious to explore the different search engine providers across the world. As we witness shifts in market shares and user preferences, it's fascinating to delve into the dynamics of search engine usage beyond the ubiquitous Google.

From the early days of Yahoo! to the clear winner in recent times, Google. Google is still the undisputed leader in search engine in terms of mobile and desktop variants.

Here are four of the most amazing web browsers other than Google, based on regions and purpose which you might not have heard before:

• Yandex – Russian search engine. It has a Site Quality Index (SQI) which indicates how useful the site is for users. It also considers the local intent and will display regional dependent results. It also has a global English version.

• Baidu – China’s premier search engine. Famous for censoring certain images and blocking pro-democracy websites.

• Naver – South Korea’s search engine. There’s no English version available, it’s entirely Korean. It is a localized search engine approach resonates deeply with Korean users. It does not use web crawling feature like Google.

• DuckDuckGo – Positioned as “The search engine that doesn’t track you”. DuckDuckGo prioritizes user privacy by eschewing data collection and personalized ads. It has ads, just not personalized ones.

Despite Google's dominance in market share of desktop search engines worldwide from 2015 to 2024, it shows a slight decline, and a rise in share market of Microsoft’s Bing. As per 2024, Google leads with a market share of 81.95% globally, followed by Bing’s 10.51% and Yahoo! 2.67%.

In Asia, the search engine market share is dominated by Google 91.28%, followed by Baidu 2.08%, and the third position is shared by Yandex 1.89% and Bing 1.89%.

In China, the leading search engine is Baidu 60.44%, followed by Bing 14.22%, and Haosou at third with 14.04%.

In South Korea, the search engine Naver leads with a market share of 62.81%, followed by Google 31.41% and Daum 5.14%.

Market share of Yandex search engine in Russia is increasing from 2017 to 2022, so much so that in Desktop version it has a market share of 71% and in the mobile version it has 58%. Yandex's ascent in Russia underscores regional player influence.

Ironically, Yahoo! is powered by Bing, so the search results in either of these are quite similar.

This brings us to the question, How does the Search Algorithm work ?

A search algorithm serves as a distinctive formula employed by search engines to fetch targeted information stored within a data structure, while also assessing the relevance and importance of web pages and their content. These algorithms are exclusive to each search engine and play a pivotal role in determining the rankings of search engine results.

Google's ranking process:

1. Discovery: Google finds pages by crawling the web, either through following links from known pages or reading sitemaps.
2. Indexing: After discovering a page, Google evaluates its content to determine relevance and quality. Not all pages are indexed; only unique and high-quality ones are typically included.
3. Search Ranking Algorithm: Indexed pages are presented to users when they search. Google's search ranking algorithm then analyzes these pages to order them based on relevance and usefulness, ensuring users receive the most helpful results.