Google is undoubtedly the leader in the internet search engine market. Both its indexing engine and the entire gigantic network of interconnected services of the Mountain View, California-based company have virtually monopolized the online marketing market . Positioning a company's website on Google and using the Google Ads advertising system, as well as—later—the Google Display Network and Display & Video 360, are now largely necessary at certain stages of business development.
Many marketers and SEO specialists forget, however, that the Google network, while by far the most popular, does not account for 100% of internet search traffic. A company's presence and good presentation in competing search engines is also crucial – it will attract traffic and potential customers from sources that are often ignored by competitors.
>> Yandex — How is the Russian search engine performing in the face of war and another data leak? <<
Microsoft Bing
The second most popular internet search engine in the "Western" world, Bing was launched in 2009 as an extension of previous Microsoft services, such as Live Search and, before that, MSN Search – one could say the Redmond company undertook a simple rebranding exercise. The search engine's name is sometimes ironically referred to as an acronym for Bing Is Not Google, which is apparently an internal joke within Microsoft itself.
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It's important to remember that the search engine is built into Windows, the world's most popular desktop operating system. Thanks to a company-to-company agreement, Bing also largely powers Yahoo's search engine. This former internet hit (though primarily in the US) now has about 1,5% market share, according to StatCounter.
Naturally, given the shared developer, Bing supports searches with the Microsoft Cortana virtual assistant. Less obvious, however, is the fact that Bing is used by Amazon's Alexa system. With the official launch of Amazon's Polish version, we can expect this to become increasingly important, and Alexa to become a daily companion for many users in Poland.
Bing is a search engine that's part of a large suite of services. For marketing and e-commerce, we get the entire Microsoft Advertising infrastructure, which works similarly to Google Ads—millions of customers and huge sales potential. However, even in its basic form, it's worth ensuring proper positioning in the Bing search engine—it's a service with millions of users worldwide.
Bing is set as the default search engine in Microsoft Edge and can be selected as the main search engine in Firefox, Edge, Google Chrome and Safari.
Useful tools for marketers:
Yandex
Yandex has existed in various forms since 1990, but it was officially introduced as yandex.ru in 1997 – formally established a few months before Google. One theory suggests that the name is self-deprecating and comes from the list Yet Another Indexer.
As a search engine targeting the Russian-speaking market, it has achieved considerable success, currently handling over 50% of web search traffic in the Russian Federation. Naturally, of all search engines, Yandex is the best at processing Cyrillic characters. Like Google and Microsoft, Yandex offers a range of other features and functionalities beyond its search engine—from a web browser, to a GPS-based navigation system, cloud storage, and an extensive display advertising network.
The Russian version is available at yandex.ru, while the Western version can be found at yandex.com.
If your clients are located—to put it simply—beyond the eastern border (excluding Ukraine, where access to Yandex has been officially blocked due to the political situation), you can't afford to ignore a search engine used by tens of millions of internet users. Yandex also operates the Yandex.Direct network, a system that displays ads across the search network, among other platforms—similar to Google and Bing.
Yandex can be set as the default search engine in Microsoft Edge and (after being added to the list) in Google Chrome.
Useful tools for marketers:
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a search engine founded in 2008. Its original name comes from a popular children's game. The search engine is also available at the easier-to-type addresses duck.com and ddg.gg. DuckDuckGo is gaining market share slowly but steadily, with nearly 100 million search queries entered daily in 2021.
DuckDuckGo uses a completely different model than Google or Bing. DDG doesn't collect user data or profile search results—it displays the same results to everyone, regardless of a person's previous online activity. This focus on privacy is the main reason the project is steadily growing in popularity—some internet users are uncomfortable with the fact that various websites, search engines, and apps collect so much data, even if it's anonymized and doesn't allow for the identification of a specific user.
Disabling profiling has both advantages and disadvantages. Users are thus cut off from content (or at least don't receive it immediately) that is statistically most likely to be relevant to their search. Profiling, in the context of searching for products or information, makes sense for shopping and significantly facilitates quick data discovery.
DuckDuckGo primarily leverages its own solutions, such as the DuckDuckBot crawler, but also numerous external sources, including Bing. This means that by optimizing your site to best meet Microsoft's search engine requirements, you're also helping your site rank in DDG. The aforementioned Bing Webmaster Tools provides basic assistance, allowing you to check for errors and discover useful tips, among other things.
If you run a local business, make sure you are present in Apple Maps – DDG uses the AM database for this, so your business will be displayed to users of both search engines.
In Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari, DuckDuckGo is one of the default search options – just select it as your main search engine in the settings.
Amazon
Interestingly, when it comes to product search alone, Google has been losing ground to another major player – Amazon – for several years now. According to Jumpshot reports, the e-commerce giant already achieved 54% of online shopping traffic in the second quarter of 2018. For this reason, the Firefox browser has long allowed Amazon Search as its default search engine. This isn't particularly significant for the services or content sector, but when it comes to typical online product sales, a presence on Amazon's platform is of immense value to manufacturers and retailers. Of course, these are global results – in Poland, Amazon's recent debut doesn't yet have such a strong presence, but it's expected that the world's largest sales platform will gradually increase its share among Polish internet users.
YouTube
In many cases, YouTube is also a significant source of traffic. In Poland, it's the second platform—after Google—that customers use to search for information. Although not strictly a sales portal, as the world's largest video platform, YouTube is a great tool for increasing brand awareness. Millions of customers use YouTube to search for reviews, watch unboxings, and discuss product quality and customer service. Therefore, it's worth at least monitoring the buzz surrounding your brand on YouTube, and ideally, focusing your content efforts on a consistent presence on the platform and proper brand exposure.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- Brief characteristics of search engines other than Google
