In SEO, the focus is so often on Google. ‘How do I rank higher in the Google SERPs?’, or ‘How can I get more rich snippets on Google?’
Of course, Google is one of the most popular search engines, but it’s certainly not the only one. Different search engines have different audience demographics and different pros and cons, so when you’re optimizing your website, you don’t want to miss out on a significant share of a certain market.
In this article, you will find a complete list of all top internet search engines, their pros and cons, and whether Google really is the most popular.
We made a list of the top ten search engines widely used today. Then we employed our .Trends Tool to find out just how popular they really are. The final list is organized by the share of total search engine visits collected in the United States during September 2021.
Here’s the result:
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Share of visits (% US market through Semrush .Trends) |
1 |
|
72.77 |
2 |
Amazon |
12.87 |
3 |
Yahoo! |
8.36 |
4 |
Bing |
2.93 |
5 |
DuckDuckGo |
1.59 |
6 |
AOL |
1.12 |
7 |
Baidu |
0.20 |
8 |
Ask.com |
0.07 |
9 |
Ecosia |
0.06 |
10 |
Yandex |
0.03 |
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Google and Amazon came out on top. Yahoo! and Bing also snatched a spot in the top five. These are names we all easily recognize in the internet world.
Engines like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Baidu, and Yandex may rank lower down, but they made our top internet search engines list for important reasons. DuckDuckGo prioritizes user privacy, Ecosia is a charity search engine, and Baidu has the highest number of single-country users with its Chinese audience – though we’ll get more into the pros and cons of each one later.
When you go one step further and look at the US market’s Growth Quadrant in the .Trends Market Explorer, you can see that search engines fall into four different categories:
Google and Amazon are considered “Established Players”, a no-brainer if we see how high they rank in the share of visits table. Ask.com and Baidu are considered “Game Changers”, and have grown at the highest rate over the last 6 months. Meanwhile, “Niche Players” like Ecosia are just finding their footing, so it’s unclear what will happen with them.
Got a certain market in mind? Let’s take a look at your most important search engine. Here are the countries that have the biggest share of the search engine market as of September 2021 according to our Market Explorer tool:
The United States is by far the biggest player with a market share of 36.11%, followed at a great distance by India with 6.64%. South Korea comes next with 4.6%. Just a step behind the podium is the United Kingdom with 3.87%.
Using the .Trends Market Explorer tool, we have broken down which search engines lead three of the top markets.
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Share of visits Sept 2021(%) |
1 |
|
72 |
2 |
Amazon |
12.87 |
3 |
Yahoo! |
8.36 |
4 |
Bing |
2.93 |
5 |
DuckDuckGo |
1.59 |
6 |
AOL |
1.12 |
7 |
Baidu |
0.20 |
8 |
Ask.com |
0.07 |
9 |
Ecosia |
0.06 |
10 |
Yandex |
0.03 |
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Share of visits Sept 2021(%) |
1 |
|
88.8 |
2 |
Yahoo! |
5.12 |
3 |
Amazon |
1.87 |
4 |
DuckDuckGo |
1.55 |
5 |
Bing |
1.51 |
6 |
AOL |
0.57 |
7 |
Ecosia |
0.33 |
8 |
Baidu |
0.16 |
9 |
Ask.com |
0.05 |
10 |
Yandex |
0.04 |
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Share of visits Sept 2021(%) |
1 |
|
91.37 |
2 |
Yahoo! |
3.11 |
3 |
Amazon |
2.33 |
4 |
Bing |
1.35 |
5 |
DuckDuckGo |
1.18 |
6 |
Baidu |
0.39 |
7 |
Ecosia |
0.15 |
8 |
Ask.com |
0.06 |
9 |
Yandex |
0.03 |
10 |
AOL |
0.02 |
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Share of visits Sept 2021(%) |
1 |
|
92.97 |
2 |
Yahoo! |
3.37 |
3 |
Amazon |
2.21 |
4 |
Bing |
0.95 |
5 |
DuckDuckGo |
0.23 |
6 |
Ask.com |
0.21 |
7 |
Yandex |
0.03 |
8 |
Ecosia |
0.02 |
9 |
AOL |
0.02 |
10 |
Baidu |
<0.01 |
Although there is some fluctuation in rankings, Google remains firmly in first place across all markets, while Yahoo! and Amazon jostle for second and third. Perhaps most interesting is that while Yandex remains in 10th spot for the US, UK, and Australian tables, in India it jumps to 7th — making it something to consider if you’re working with this market.
Given that Baidu is a Chinese search engine, Yandex is a Russian search engine, and Ecosia started in Germany, let’s take a closer look at where they rank in their respective markets.
In September 2021 in China, Russia, and Germany, the search engines rank as follows:
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Chinese share of visits (%) |
1 |
Baidu |
66.82 |
2 |
|
21.24 |
3 |
Bing |
2.21 |
4 |
Amazon |
2.3 |
5 |
DuckDuckGo |
1.75 |
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Russian share of visits (%) |
1 |
|
98.17 |
2 |
Yandex |
0.55 |
3 |
Yahoo! |
0.49 |
4 |
Amazon |
0.32 |
5 |
Bing |
0.2 |
Ranking |
Search Engine |
German share of visits (%) |
1 |
|
89.54 |
2 |
Yahoo! |
3.04 |
3 |
Bing |
2.40 |
4 |
Amazon |
1.93 |
5 |
DuckDuckGo |
1.43 |
6 |
AOL |
0.73 |
7 |
Ecosia |
0.70 |
It’s fair to assume, based on this, that you do want to optimize your website for Google regardless of your market — except perhaps for China. However, if you want to target the Russian market, you can’t afford to ignore Yandex.
But what about the general population of internet users? Who ranks first then?
Here are the top search engines based on their Twitter followings:
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Number of Twitter followers in Sept 2021 |
1 |
|
23.4 million |
2 |
Amazon |
3.8 million |
3 |
DuckDuckGo |
1.9 million |
4 |
Yahoo! |
1.4 million |
5 |
Bing |
544,600 |
6 |
AOL |
164,800 |
7 |
Ecosia |
87,300 |
8 |
Ask.com |
59,200 |
9 |
Baidu |
44,200 |
10 |
Yandex |
18,900 |
Unsurprisingly, Google and Amazon remain on top. However, DuckDuckGo has surpassed both Yahoo and Bing, jumping two places up in the market share ranking. Ecosia also moved two places up, while Baidu sank to the bottom. This could indicate a difference in demographic between search engine users in general and search engine users who are active on Twitter.
In terms of customer rating, the rankings look different again. We used the Market Explorer tool to check the Trustpilot score of each of the internet search engines in September 2021:
Ranking |
Search Engine |
Trustpilot Rating (stars/5) |
1 |
Ecosia |
3.9 |
2 |
|
3.4 |
3 |
DuckDuckGo |
3.3 |
4 |
Yandex |
2.9 |
5 |
Baidu |
2.3 |
6 |
Bing |
2.0 |
7 |
Amazon |
1.9 |
8 |
Ask.com |
1.9 |
9 |
AOL |
1.7 |
10 |
Yahoo! |
1.6 |
Kind of a different picture, isn’t it?
Although an established player like Google remains in the top three for customer rating, Amazon has dropped all the way to 7th place, while Ecosia has jumped to the top, with DuckDuckGo in its chase.Ecosia’s top position in popularity here is a powerful signal of just how much potential this search engine has.
We recommend keeping a close eye on this.
Learn About Your Traffic Statistics
with the Market Explorer Tool
How do we explain the big difference in market shares among search engines? And how does that relate to how they’re ranked on trust pilot, or which one is most followed on Twitter?
Let’s find out by taking a look at their pros and cons.
Its size and reputation.
Its extra features.
It sells data to third parties.
It takes data from emails (and uses it to show users relevant ads).
Its privacy.
Its size.
Its transparency.
Its easily customizable interface.
Its privacy (funnily enough!).
It lacks personalization.
It doesn’t have many extra features.
Its size.
Its interface.
Its results.
Its results.
Its ads.
Its privacy.
Its interface.
It’s a charity.
Its great Trustpilot rating.
Its transparency.
Its privacy.
Its interface.
Its relevancy.
Its rewards program.
Its advanced searches and features.
Its (lack of) privacy.
Its interface.
Its size.
Its purpose.
Its interface.
Its size.
Its high cost (for sellers).
It’s a gateway to the Russian market
Its added features.
Its “protect” feature makes it feel safer for users.
Its results are best for Russian web pages so if you’re not working for the Russian market, it may not be relevant to you.
Remember that in Russia, Yandex ranked 2nd in terms of total traffic:
Its gateway to the Chinese market.
It covers over 70% of China’s search market.
It’s heavily censored, so not everything can be listed and shared on Baidu.
The results are best localized for China, so if you’re not working for the Chinese market, it may not be relevant to you.
Remember that in China, Baidu ranked 1st with 66.92% of the total traffic:
Its size.
Its relevant results for search terms.
Its features.
Its interface.
Its results.
Its size.
Its algorithm.
Its tools.
Its SERP interface.
They have a related searches feature.
Its overall interface.
Its results.
So, we think it’s pretty safe to conclude that Google is the top search engine out there for a lot of reasons.
Not only does it have the top share of visits in the US, UK, Australia, India, Russia, and Germany, and have the most Twitter followers by a lead of 19.3 million over its next competitor (Amazon) as of September 2021, but it also has the second-biggest share of visits in China and ranks second on Trustpilot after Ecosia.
Getting a handle on where you rank in Google’s empire is therefore of the utmost importance.
To monitor how you’re performing for keywords, you can use our Position Tracking tool to monitor the Google SERPs. Just go to the Position Tracking section of your Semrush SEO Dashboard to check out your visibility, improved and declined keywords, and more:
And click on any of the statistics for more information:
You can also use the Organic Research tool to see how some of your competitors are performing on Google. Just enter a domain to get started and discover your competitors’ best keywords.
Find out your main competitors and where you rank among them:
And switch your focus to the keywords that you know will pay off. Just use the easy filters to create keyword lists and add them easily to your keyword manager.
So, what are the main takeaways here?
So, yes, it’s safe to say that Google is widely considered to be the top search engine. However, be sure to take other popular ones into consideration as well! You could be missing out on extra traffic.
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