Search engines are critical for SEO. The ultimate goal of agencies is to position the client’s website on the first page, from which it can get the most traffic. Right now, Google is the main focus of every SEO company for a simple reason, that majority of the world population uses it while searching for anything. Right now, Google holds 92,6% of search engines market share worldwide.
Nevertheless, it would be risky to assume that Google will stay dominant forever. In fact, modern business environment and technology changes very fast. Google was “born” only 23 years ago, and it has changed our lives completely. It is possible that in 20 years from now (or less), the most popular search engine will be overtaken by a new player in the market.
There are already new search engines, gaining popularity in specific markets, offering new solutions.
- Bing
This search engine owned by Microsoft might seem small in comparison to Google, but it gets around 1.3 billion visits each month, making it the second largest search engine in the world.
Bing works similar to Google, but it does focus more on a visual aspect. Whenever it is possible you will see a nice picture, the results are presented in more aesthetical way.
It is fairly popular in United States where it holds 6.34% of the market, compared to 2.31% it has worldwide. In addition, it is the default search engine in all Microsoft devices.
- Baidu
This Chinese search engine holds 1.91% of global market. Nevertheless, it is absolutely dominant in China where it has 85.37% and Google holds there only 1.71%! Due to online censorship present in China, it is hard for western companies to enter their search engine market, while abiding by all of the strict censorship laws.
Baidu is not really used outside of China, but anybody willing to enter the Chinese market should focus on this search engine. We should also keep in mind that with current quick development of China´s economy, the situation of Baidu may change in the near future.
- Yandex
Another search engine strongly correlated with localization. Yandex is a Russian search engine specialized in a good understanding of complex and difficult language such as Russian. It is popular in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey.
Yandex holds only 0.93% of market worldwide, but in its base location it is a strong player. It holds 41% of Russian market, 14.55% of Kazakh, 5.09 of Ukrainian and surprisingly 15.65% of Turkish.
Anybody looking to enter these markets should focus his or her SEO on Yandex. Especially considering that in the last 12 months, Yandex’s market share worldwide have more than doubled from. 0.41% to 0.93%, which makes it one of the fastest growing search engines in the world.
- Yahoo!
Being powered by Microsoft Bing, this search engine offers very similar search results. Yahoo represents 1.5% of search engines market share worldwide. It is really popular in Japan where it has 19.48% of the market, mainly thanks to its email services and news.
- DuckDuckGo
This search engine, currently holding 0.6% of a market share worldwide and 2.38% in USA is all about privacy. DuckDuckGo doesn’t collect, store, share or analyze the information about its users.
There is a growing trend of people not trusting big and powerful companies such as Google, raising concerns about storage of data about users. This creates growth opportunity for DuckDuckGo. Therefore, all SEO experts should observe it and plan eventual strategies of positioning in this search engine.
- Ecosia
This small search engine holds a great potential. The only thing it is missing is recognition. Nevertheless, it holds 0.35% of Europe’s market share and 1.01% in Germany – its country of origin.
Ecosia’s biggest advantage is its ecological approach. The money from searches is used to plant trees. It is estimated that every 45 searches convert into one tree and there are around 56 searches performed on Ecosia every second. The company claims to plant over 136 million trees. Around half of Ecosia’s income is used for this.
In addition, energy used to power Ecosia comes from solar panels, it takes privacy more seriously than Google – it encrypts all users data and get rid of them after a week. They are also transparent about all their expenses and offer very similar search results to Google.
With the raising concerns about wellbeing of our planet and privacy, it is clear that the only thing standing between Ecosia and big market share is recognition and marketing.
