THE 7 BEST WEB SEARCH ENGINES
A
web search engine or Internet search engine is a software system that is
designed to carry out web search (Internet search), which means to search the
World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a
textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a line
of results, often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The
information may be a mix of links to web pages, images, videos, infographics,
articles, research papers, and other types of files. Some search engines also
mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike web directories,
which are maintained only by human editors, search engines also maintain
real-time information by running an algorithm on a web crawler. Internet content
that is not capable of being searched by a web search engine is generally
described as the deep web.
Google
Search, also referred to as Google Web Search or simply Google, is a web search
engine developed by Google. It is the most used search engine on the World Wide
Web across all platforms, with 92.62% market share as of June 2019, handling
more than 5.4 billion searches each day.
The
order of search results returned by Google is based, in part, on a priority
rank system called "PageRank". Google Search also provides many
different options for customized search, using symbols to include, exclude,
specify or require certain search behavior, and offers specialized interactive
experiences, such as flight status and package tracking, weather forecasts,
currency, unit and time conversions, word definitions, and more.
The
main purpose of Google Search is to hunt for text in publicly accessible
documents offered by web servers, as opposed to other data, such as images or
data contained in databases. It was originally developed in 1997 by Larry Page,
Sergey Brin, and Scott Hassan. In June 2011, Google introduced "Google
Voice Search" to search for spoken, rather than typed, words. In May 2012,
Google introduced a Knowledge Graph semantic search feature in the U.S.
Analysis
of the frequency of search terms may indicate economic, social and health
trends.[10] Data about the frequency of use of search terms on Google can be
openly inquired via Google Trends and have been shown to correlate with flu
outbreaks and unemployment levels, and provide the information faster than
traditional reporting methods and surveys. As of mid-2016, Google's search
engine has begun to rely on deep neural networks.
Competitors
of Google include Baidu and Soso.com in China; Naver.com and Daum.net in South
Korea; Yandex in Russia; Seznam.cz in the Czech Republic; Qwant in France;
Yahoo in Japan, Taiwan and the US, as well as Bing and DuckDuckGo. Some smaller
search engines offer facilities not available with Google, e.g. not storing any
private or tracking information.
Within
the U.S., as of July 2018, Bing handled 24.2 percent of all search queries.
During the same period of time, Oath (formerly known as Yahoo) had a search
market share of 11.5 percent. Market leader Google generated 63.2 percent of
all core search queries in the U.S.
#2 - Qwant
Qwant
is a European web search engine, launched in July 2013 and operated from Paris.
It's the only EU-based search engine with its own indexing engine. It claims
not to employ user tracking and doesn't personalize search results in order to
avoid trapping users in a filter bubble. It is available in 13 languages.
The
website processes well over 10 million search requests per day and over 50
million individual users a month worldwide, spread over its three main entry
points: the normal homepage, a "light" version and a "Qwant
Junior" portal for children that filters results.
In
the development phase, Qwant searches were powered by Bing in addition to its
own indexing capabilities. Qwant also confirmed the use of Bing advertising
network.
As
of March 2019, Qwant is the 41st most visited website in France and the 879th
most visited website in the world.
#3 - Bing
Bing
is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service has its
origins in Microsoft's previous search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search
and later Live Search. Bing provides a variety of search services, including
web, video, image and map search products. It is developed using ASP.NET.
Bing,
Microsoft's replacement for Live Search, was unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve
Ballmer on May 28, 2009, at the All Things Digital conference in San Diego,
California, for release on June 3, 2009. Notable new features at the time
included the listing of search suggestions while queries are entered and a list
of related searches (called "Explore pane") based on semantic
technology from Powerset, which Microsoft had acquired in 2008.
In
July 2009, Microsoft and Yahoo! announced a deal in which Bing would power
Yahoo! Search. All Yahoo! Search global customers and partners made the
transition by early 2012. The deal was altered in 2015, meaning Yahoo! was only
required to use Bing for a "majority" of searches.
In
October 2011, Microsoft stated that they were working on new back-end search
infrastructure with the goal of delivering faster and slightly more relevant
search results for users. Known as "Tiger", the new index-serving
technology had been incorporated into Bing globally since August that year. In
May 2012, Microsoft announced another redesign of its search engine that
includes "Sidebar", a social feature that searches users' social
networks for information relevant to the search query.
As
of October 2018, Bing is the third largest search engine globally, with a query
volume of 4.58%, behind Google (77%) and Baidu (14.45%). Yahoo! Search, which
Bing largely powers, has 2.63%.
#4 - Mojeek
Mojeek
is a web search engine based in the United Kingdom. The search results provided
by Mojeek come from its own index of web pages, created by crawling the web.
#5 - Yandex
Yandex
Search is a web search engine owned by Russian corporation Yandex. It is the
core product of Yandex. In January 2015 Yandex Search generated 51.2% of all
search traffic in Russia according to LiveInternet [ru; uk].
#6 - YaCy
YaCy
(pronounced "ya see") is a free distributed search engine, built on
principles of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Its core is a computer program written
in Java distributed on several hundred computers, as of September 2006,
so-called YaCy-peers. Each YaCy-peer independently crawls through the Internet,
analyzes and indexes found web pages, and stores indexing results in a common
database (so called index) which is shared with other YaCy-peers using
principles of P2P networks. It is a free search engine that everyone can use to
build a search portal for their intranet and to help search the public internet
clearly.
Compared
to semi-distributed search engines, the YaCy-network has a decentralised
architecture. All YaCy-peers are equal and no central server exists. It can be
run either in a crawling mode or as a local proxy server, indexing web pages
visited by the person running YaCy on his or her computer. (Several mechanisms
are provided to protect the user's privacy). Access to the search functions is
made by a locally running web server which provides a search box to enter
search terms, and returns search results in a similar format to other popular
search engines.
YaCy
was created in 2003 by Michael Christen.
#7 - Gigablast
Gigablast
is a free and open-source web search engine and directory. Founded in 2000, it
is an independent engine and web crawler based in New Mexico, developed and
maintained by Matt Wells, a former Infoseek employee and New Mexico Tech
graduate.
The
search engine source code is written in the programming languages C and C++. It
was released as open-source software under the Apache License version 2, in
July 2013. In 2015, Gigablast claimed to have indexed over 12 billion web
pages, and received billions of queries per month.
Gigablast
has provided, and provides, search results to other companies, such as Ixquick,
Clusty, Zuula, Snap, Blingo, and Internet Archive.
Best Web Search Engines
Reviewed by bsm
on
December 15, 2019
Rating:
Reviewed by bsm
on
December 15, 2019
Rating:
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