When you think about a search engine, immediately Google comes to mind. You may be using it for many years now and quite convinced that there is none like Google. But If I say there are top 5 popular search engines in the world, you might wonder which are the people who use them and why? Is there anything that these search engines offer but Google doesn’t? Let us discuss these top 5 popular search engines in the world.
We will check their rankings based on the search traffic and also look into various features of top two players in this field.
List of top 5 popular search engines in the world
1. Google
Google web search is commonly referred as Google Search. This search engine was developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997. As per the latest data available for April 2017, Google search is having 79.79% of market share of total search traffic. It means Google is sitting at the first place among top 5 popular search engines in the world.
Let us discuss some important points of Google search.
Google does not focus on the exact match of words for search results. Rather, it is using semantic search which identifies natural language patterns and gives results which are based on the context of the words that are typed into the search bar. Google takes into account relationships between keywords before delivering search results.
Video search by Google is not as good as Bing’s. Google lacks the feature of the video preview of the search result videos. But shopping suggestions by Google are much better and more than what Bing provides.
The PageRank algorithm from Google is based on the quality and quantity of backlinks that a website gets from other websites. Each qualified backlink is counted as an ‘upvote’ in favor of the site receiving it. Higher domain authority of the sites providing backlinks increases search ranking of the website receiving these backlinks.
Google bots scan through all contents of your web pages to make a decision about your site’s ranking. It includes scanning of all types of contents whether they are right or wrong.
When a website is submitted to Google for being indexed, your entire sitemap finds a place in its directories.
Google always looks for fresh contents. Its algorithms search and display the latest content provided other factors like domain authority, link profile, relevance, etc. remains the same.
Google search engine is basically text driven and interprets an image based on its Alt tag which is attached to that picture.
The importance of social media in SERP rankings is not very clear. Once a Google official told social media had no role in ranking. But evidence denies his claim. Officially, social media is not a significant ranking factor for Google.
You may want to read:
2. Bing
It is a search engine created and operated by Microsoft since 2009. Before this, Microsoft experimented with MSN search, Windows live search and live search. Microsoft has tried hard to compete with Google but has failed so far. Bing is second in top 5 popular search engines in the world with 7.13% of the global search traffic.
Let us discuss some important points of Bing.
Bing is focusing on an exact match of words- anchor text, keyword, title tag, etc. So if a user makes a spelling mistake while typing a word, the search results are entirely out of context. It indicates Bing is not catching user’s intent of the search.
Video search on Bing is excellent, even better than Google’s. Bing provides a large thumbnail view of videos discovered. It even offers a preview of the video on which you hold the mouse pointer. And that happens without leaving the Bing.
Bing provides eight autocomplete suggestions while Google gives only four.
Bing does not focus so much on backlinks as Google does. The quality of sites providing backlinks is more important for Bing. Moreover, anchor text has to match your keywords exactly or partially to worth even counting.
Bing’s bots do not scan your entire web page to find a keyword. They read around 100 kb of content at the beginning of your pages.
If you want Bing to index your pages, they must carry minimum one backlink from a high authority site.
Bing gives importance to the old contents. Sites which are there for some time get better ranking in Bing provided all other ranking factors remain the same.
The homepage of Bing normally has an attractive image of the day. It reflects the Bing’s interests in aesthetics and travels in its search.
Bing also attaches importance to social media. It treats social signals like tweets, shares, and popularity as ranking factors. These signals are among the top ranking factors for Bing.
3. Baidu
It is the most popular search engine in China and was launched in 2007. Most of the search traffic is for websites, images, and audio files. Baidu has 82% of Chinese search traffic while it is occupying 6.77% of global search traffic. Still, it is at third place among top 5 popular search engines in the world.
Baidu has a better understanding of local Chinese language & its culture which helps it to optimize its search technology for Chinese.
4. Yahoo! Search
It is a web search engine from Yahoo. It has 5.2% of the global market share of search traffic and 3rd most popular search engine in the United States. Overall, it is at fourth place among top 5 popular search engines.
5. Ask.com
This search engine is focused on answering questions and was founded in 1996. It has only 0.14% of global search traffic and is fifth among top 5 popular search engines.
Ask.com is also available as a browser toolbar, and it has been found bundled with many software. Still, it could offer no competition to the bigger players.
There are some other search engines also like, AOL, Excite, DuckDuckGo, WolframAlpha, Yandex, Lycos, Chacha.com, etc. Although these also offer general services of a search engine but do not match the bigger players in this field for the quality of search results.
Conclusion
After discussing top 5 popular search engines, we can see that Google and Bing are the top search engines used globally while Baidu, the third player, is being employed in China. If you were using Google, and in some cases, you were not getting what you want, you have the option to try some other search engine from the above list.
