How Many Search Engines Are There? Statistics & Facts (2024)

How Many Search Engines Are There In The World?

There are 30 search engines in the world that are solely dedicated to general web searching. However, when you include niche search engines that cater to specific features and are unique to various countries, the number increases to over 1500 globally.

Across the globe, there are over 1500 search engines, including niche ones catering to specific features and unique to various countries. 30 of these are dedicated solely to general web searching.

Further down we share the specifics of these 30 general search engines and also highlights the top 9 AI search engines in popularity.

What Is A Search Engine?

A search engine is a tool that allows users to find information on the internet by entering keywords or phrases. It analyzes and indexes web pages to provide relevant search results in a matter of seconds.

Search engines like Google have become an integral part of our daily lives, serving as a gateway to the vast amount of online content. They help users navigate and make sense of the ever-expanding internet landscape.

There Are 30 General Search Engines in the World

This is a collection of the most frequented search engines globally, accompanied by some notable statistics and facts:

1. Google

Google, based in the United States, is a multilingual search engine operated by Google itself and is the most popular search engine worldwide. Google processes over 8.5 billion searches per day.

2. Baidu

Baidu is a Chinese search engine, operated by Baidu China, and is the most popular search engine in China. Baidu holds over 70% of the search engine market share in China.

3. Microsoft Bing

Microsoft Bing is a multilingual search engine operated by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. Bing is the second largest search engine in the United States.

4. Yahoo! Search

Yahoo! Search is a multilingual search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. Yahoo! Search is the third most popular search engine in the United States.

5. Yandex

Yandex is a multilingual search engine operated by Yandex in Russia and is the most popular search engine in Russia. Yandex holds over 50% of the search engine market share in Russia.

6. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a multilingual search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. DuckDuckGo is known for not tracking its users.

7. Ask.com

Ask.com is a multilingual search engine powered by Google and based in the United States. Ask.com originally started as a question and answer site.

8. Ecosia

Ecosia is a multilingual search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. Ecosia uses its profits to plant trees.

9. Startpage

Startpage is an English search engine powered by Google and based in the United States. Startpage is known for providing Google search results with more privacy.

10. Sogou

Sogou is a multilingual search engine operated by Tencent in China. Sogou is the second largest search engine in China.

11. Qwant

Qwant is a multilingual search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. Qwant is known for not tracking its users.

12. Swisscows

Swisscows is a multilingual search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. Swisscows is known for its data security and privacy.

13. Dogpile

Dogpile is an English metasearch engine. Dogpile fetches results from Google, Yahoo, and Yandex.

14. WebCrawler

WebCrawler is an English search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. WebCrawler is one of the oldest search engines.

15. You.com

You.com is an English search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. You.com is a new search engine launched in 2021.

16. Excite

Excite is a multilingual search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. Excite is one of the oldest search engines.

17. Lycos

Lycos is a multilingual search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. Lycos is one of the oldest search engines.

18. HotBot

HotBot is an English search engine powered by Microsoft Bing and based in the United States. HotBot was launched in 1996.

19. MetaCrawler

MetaCrawler is an English metasearch engine. MetaCrawler fetches results from Google, Yahoo, and Yandex.

20. Mojeek

Mojeek is a multilingual search engine operated by Mojeek in the United Kingdom. Mojeek is the first search engine to have its own crawler.

21. Searx

Searx is a multilingual metasearch engine. Searx is known for respecting privacy.

22. YaCy

YaCy is a multilingual search engine under the GPL-2.0-or-later license. YaCy is a peer-to-peer search engine.

23. Brave Search

Brave Search is a multilingual search engine run by Brave in the United States. Brave Search is a new search engine launched in 2021.

24. Elasticsearch

Elasticsearch is a multilingual search engine that used Apache 2.0 until 2021, then Elasticsearch. Elasticsearch is mainly used for big data search.

25. Exalead

Exalead is a multilingual search engine powered by Cloudview and based in France. Exalead is used for enterprise search.

26. Gigablast

Gigablast is an English search engine under the Apache License 2.0. Gigablast is one of the few search engines with its own crawler.

27. Kagi

Kagi is an English metasearch engine and Kagi Inc based in the United States. Kagi is known for its shopping search.

28. Opensearch

Opensearch is a multilingual search engine under the Apache License 2.0 (Elasticsearch fork). Opensearch is a community-driven, open source search and analytics suite.

29. Petal

Petal is a multilingual search engine operated by Huawei in China. Petal is a new search engine launched in 2020.

30. Youdao

Youdao is a Chinese search engine operated by NetEase in China. Youdao is known for its dictionary.

Top Search Engines Based On Market Share:

Here are the market shares of the most popular search engines listed in a table:

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The table clearly shows Google's dominance in the search engine market with a staggering 90.68% share, while Bing and Yahoo trail significantly at 3.23% and 3.17% respectively. Other search engines, including the privacy-focused DuckDuckGo, collectively make up less than 3% of the market. (Source: Similarweb)

While general search engines continue to dominate, AI-powered search engines have gained significant traction in recent years. Therefore, it's pertinent to delve into the top 9 AI search engines.

Top AI Search Engines

Here are 9 of the top AI-powered search engines, each offering unique features and capabilities:

1. Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft Copilot, leveraging OpenAI's advanced language model, offers precise text and voice-based search. It includes an AI chat feature and refines search results for comprehensive answers.

2. ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a widely recognized AI chatbot and search engine. The free version functions primarily as a chatbot, while the paid version uses live data for more accurate responses. It also offers features like understanding handwritten documents and data analysis.

3. Komo

Komo is an AI-driven search engine emphasizing speed and privacy. It provides personalized search outcomes and generates answers along with the sites used to create them. It has three main features — Ask, Explore, and Search.

4. Waldo

Waldo allows users to fine-tune their searches and provides quick answers. It offers features like publishing and exporting Google Docs and compiling research into a shareable document. It's designed for freelancers, teams, and enterprise users.

5. You.com

You.com is an AI search engine that aims to give users more control over their searches. The subscription-based YouPro service uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 to provide more detailed and accurate answers and comes with additional features.

6. Perplexity AI

Perplexity AI generates domain-specific answers gathered from several pages, eliminating generic search results. It provides an answer in the form of a summary and always cites sources you can check.

7. Andi

Andi is a combination of a chatbot and search engine. It uses AI technology to offer more comprehensive search results, gathers data from various sources, and often presents a single result with its own explanation.

8. Yep

Yep is a revenue-sharing search engine that uses AI technologies to offer better search results. It specializes in visual search, uses AI to understand and analyze images, and provides search results based on complex user queries.

9. Google Gemini

Google Gemini is Google’s response to OpenAI ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Chat. It’s still experimental, but it’s entirely free to use. The tool can answer questions with more details than regular search results, generate texts, translate content, help you with your tasks, and much more.