In 2019, it was reported that Google has 92% of the search engine market share worldwide. Processing approximately 70,000 search queries every second, 5.8 billion searches per day and 2 trillion searches per year globally!
While Google undeniably remains the most popular search engine, is it possible that merchants are overlooking other potential lucrative search avenues in the bid to come out top on Google? In this blog, we’ll take a deeper dive into some other search engines, considering several perspectives, including usability, privacy, popularity and advertising.
Other Search Engines
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo has a growing following of users who have a shared interest in protecting their privacy. Processing around 1.5 billion searches every month, DuckDuckGo works in broadly the same way as any other search engine. It combines data from hundreds of sources (including Wolfram Alpha, Wikipedia and Bing) with its own web crawler, to surface the most relevant results. The key differences are that DuckDuckGo does not store IP addresses or user information, they do not share searches with advertisers, and Google products and services do not accompany results.
DuckDuckGo is transparent on why they include some ads alongside searches, and this is to make enough money for the search engine to operate. Ads presented are more generic, so users do not feel like the invasion of personal space often prompted by personalisation technology, that many other search engines use.
Bing
Bing may be more significant than you think. It’s the second-largest search engine by market share in the US, and one of the 50 most visited sites on the internet according to Alexa rankings. From a user perspective, the Bing homepage replicates Google’s and the act of searching is almost identical.
Searches on Xbox, Alexa, Siri, Kindle and Cortana are all powered by Bing, so the impact of how people search on different devices has played into Bing’s favour, increasing its popularity.
There’s still a long way to go before it catches up with the popularity of Google, but by capturing the opportunity in device-led search, Microsoft is future-proofing for life after desktop.
Baidu
Chinese authorities blocked websites and search engines such as Google and introduced Baidu to control content nationwide. As a result, Baidu is now the chosen search engine for many Chinese people, ranking 5th most popular website worldwide according to Alexa results. Baidu even allowed companies to bid on space for ads long before Google introduced their ads feature, and traditionally its demographic of users believe that if a company can pay for the ads, it is a reliable company.
With over 700 million active users in China alone, Baidu has a massive network of users that continues to grow. If you’re considering targeting Chinese markets, it is crucial to bear in mind that Baidu is mainly used to raise brand awareness (when a search is driven by purchase intent, typically users will turn to the relevant eCommerce website). To ensure your ads are a success, we recommend using local experts to localise your ad copy rather than simply translating your UK ads.
Yandex
Yandex is Russia’s leading search engine and is also popular in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Belarus. Unlike Google, it offers a cloud storage service so that users can search for their files from Yandex’s search bar. However, the advertising model for Yandex. Direct is very similar to Google AdWords in that ads are displayed according to your bidding strategy, and merchants are charged every time someone clicks on their ad.
Want to grow your online presence in the increasingly lucrative Eastern European internet market? The fastest and most cost-effective way of getting your brand in front of this audience is to run PPC campaigns via Yandex while taking inspiration from its Negative Suggestion feature.
Of course, we have only covered a small fragment of the search engines that are out there, and alongside this, there’s also the prevalence of Amazon’s A9 search division and YouTube to consider. Ultimately, Google should remain at the forefront of your SEO strategy, but it’s essential to consider alternative traffic opportunities and search engines which are right for your service or products. By diversifying your channels, you may be more likely to capture first-page search results and be in a better position to connect with your ideal target audience.
Alexa rankings
Alexa rankings
