Last Updated on March 3, 2023
We all use Google. Its widespread popularity has become the industry standard for search engines. Although Google leads the search engine battle, many people overlook other search engines like; Bing, Yahoo, Ask, Blekko, Yandex, and DuckDuckGo. These alternate search engines each have their own unique features, benefits and hidden secrets!
What Makes Google So Popular?
Created by two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, this search engines’ creation began on January 1996. The website was finally launch in September of 1998, due to their dedication to the sites both Page and Brin left Stanford to work full time on their project. Turn out to be a good idea considering Google is one of the most powerful companies in the world.
No doubt that Google is a powerhouse; the site receives 30,000 searches per second. According to a recent study, Google is used by 87 percent of the world’s population internet users. Google basically runs the search engine world, but is it trying to hard? Google uses SEO and its ranking tactics, such as how many links or content a site has to see were that site will fall in searches. Google also tries to combat web spam and black hat tactics a little too much. Though this billion dollar company won’t be going anywhere for a while.
Bing
Released by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Bing is a search engine that was online in June of 2009. This Microsoft based search engine was hyped up when it released in hopes of crushing competitor Google, but eventually flopped. The Microsoft run search engine put together a well-planned publicity campaign once unveiled, but was no match for Google.
Bing’s catch and new idea it brought to the world of search engines was its use of getting you exactly what you searched for. Seemingly present, proved difficult. Say I wanted to search Hawaii to look at the cities, what if when I searched Hawaii, trips and hotel offers came about. See, it isn’t as easy as It looks to get the exact search that you want. That’s why in 2009 got a little help from a friend.
Yahoo
Founded in 1994 by Jerry Yang and David Filo, Yahoo, was one of the earlier search engine sites to hit the web. Most likely Google’s best competition is Yahoo, which was released in March of 1995. This search engine is second most used under Google and is a strong and reliable source to search the web. After it’s merging with Bing in 2009 they both attempted to bring the mighty Google together.
Combing their search engines hoping to gain more active users and ultimately control the search engine business together. That’s right whatever you search on Yahoo you will get the exact same results for Bing. Though this tactic proved futile, you can’t blame the second and third company attempting band together. Google’s popularity was just too much for the search engines of Yahoo and Bing.
Ask
Originally known as Ask Jeeves, Ask, is an older and reliable search engine. Though not as popular as it once was when founded in 1996, this search engine is a pioneer of search engines and paved the way for later search engines that have risen. This seemingly dead search engine site may have run its course as only .8 percent of Americans use Ask as their search engine.
Founded by Garret Gruener and David Warthen this site has a low usage compared to Google. The results when searched for this engine are not even that bad; this engine is reliable and can be used just as well as some of the best. It’s just in today’s world of internet usage and searches; Ask just was unable to compete with the big dogs.
Blekko
Released in November of 2010 this is a more recent search engine site that was founded by Rich Skrenta. With over 3 billion trusted webpage links, Blekko advertises that it is a better search engine site than Google. Though this is a newer site it has failed to meet expectations. This site is not used by many active internet users around the United States.
Though, the innovation of the site seems interesting as it uses the slashtag to help direct users in the right direction of their search. With the slashtag users can access news or sports all under one category by the easy and user friend slashtag. A nice idea by the creators and web developers of Blekko, but I don’t see this search engine company going anywhere.
Yandex
The largest search engine in Russia was founded by Arkady Volozh, Arkady Borkovsky and Ilay Segalovich in 1997 and launched in 2000. Though it’s not too popular in America, this is one of the largest companies in all of Russia. Yandex uses the latest in technological advances in their search engine almost matching the Google search engine in the process, the way searches come up in Yandex is very similar to the of Google. In the process they rank sites according to links and content and other SEO related ideas. In this they are able to give credibility to the sites that are the most trusted and authoritative and put them higher up in their search engine rankings.
DuckDuckGo
Launch in September of 2008 DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg and is a somewhat well designed search engine site. Though the site isn’t very popular, its searches consist mainly of community based sites similar to those of Wikipedia which enable the user to travel more freely through the internet. The site also provides no filter bubble to the user. Which is what Google and many other sites use.
This filter bubble filters out results when searching something based on previous searches. If you constantly search Republican for weeks and one day you type in politics your searches on Google will contain all Republican news stories. Without the filter bubble you are more open and free to research all types of information that may not be what you constantly search. This allows you to see more of the web and see all types of articles and sites that may not be what you normally search.
Black Hat & White Hat SEO on Alternate Search Engines?
Google invests quite a bit of time and money in their webspam team. Dozens of people tweak the algorithm to prevent black hat links, paid links and spammy SEO tactics. Other search engines take a different approach. These engines look at only the few best links, sacrificing the signals from lower quality links. As a result, black hat SEO is often much more challenging on the alternate search engines.
Check out our previous articles:
- Not Getting the Desired Traffic? Time to Change your Web Design!
- Big Ideas Make Big Things Happen – SEO Analysis
- Doing the Internal Linking the Right Way
- Google’s Search Results Requested To Be Removed
- Apple Safari 5 – What’s in it for a Windows user?
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