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I won’t blame you if you have always thought that Google search is the only search engine on the internet. I can say you have to remove that school of thought as there are alternative search engines to Google.
Indeed, Google search engine is the most popularly used in the world, it has the highest search engine market share with a whooping 93.12% of search data. That is why most internet users believe that Google is the ultimate when it comes to search browsers. There are Google alternatives that offer richer search experience for users while offering privacy, which is one of the limitations of Google.
Although each search engine is known for its distinctive specialty pros compared to the others; such as product research, news updates, digital marketing, and revenue generation. They all function primarily for the same basic purpose, which is providing information for users. In this article we would analyze the different alternative search engines to explore for your daily search queries other than Google.
What is a Search Engine?
This is a programmed software that enables internet audiences to gain information about a subject using keywords that match their search intent. For example, a person trying to learn a digital marketing skill online can easily type on a search button with the keyword (digital marketing skills to learn). This will be interpreted by search engines to share results of skills offered and resources provided by the search browser to explore more options on search engine results pages.
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Our List of The Best Alternative Search Engines to Explore
There are so many Google alternative search engines to look out for in 2023. But before you explore them you have to understand their operational mechanism for you to get a satisfied user experience. Let’s dive in!
Yep.com
Ahrefs in 2019, created Yep as a default search engine alternative contribution for SEO businesses. This is just a search engine that uses a 90/10 business model to reward content creators by allowing them to earn money through advertisement. This revenue share model attracts publishers and investors to take part in creating valuable content that will satisfy user’s search preferences.
Pros:
- It provides an unbiased private search engine experience for users.
- It doesn’t use cookies or keep records of search history.
Cons :
- It is still in the starting development phase compared to other search browsers.
Presearch
Presearch was founded in 2017, in Toronto Canada. This is a research platform that is private and operates on a blockchain-based technology. This privacy-oriented search browser uses a decentralized search engine which requires activities of the distributed nodes. These nodes are rewarded with Presearch tokens for translation of search data.
Pros
- This decentralized feature censors or restricts search results.
- Most technology operational data are secured using these types of search engines.
- It allows users to customize search results by weighing their options.
- It is designed to provide accountability and transparency.
Cons
- It’s a new search browser with limited data sources.
- Data provided are immutable, which limits room for data updates.
- Ranking results are influenced by users which can taper off the quality of the search result.
- It doesn’t offer utility features like images, news, video search etc.
Boardreader
This is the most interactive alternative search engine that allows you to search forums and filter by dates and language. It is a tool used for research demographics. You are able to tell if content is written by a user. It allows users to search thousands of forums with trending topics relevant to their niche.
Pros
- It indexes millions of posts with only 3 minimum search servers.
- It is implemented using a manual partitioning scheme with sitemaps for handling each forum and double data storage.
Cons
- It contains a lot of links that may cause spam for web crawlers.
Ecosia
This type of alternative search engine focuses primarily on contributing to the environment by planting trees, for ecosystem sustainability. This site has a program that has implemented the planting of 147 million trees. For every search made on these popular search engines, the revenue generated is channeled to planting schemes.
Pros
- Impacts CO2 emission where search results about the environment are obtained.
- It has its own search engine privacy settings. Which anonymizes all searched history within a week.
Cons
- It is a specific-based search browser.
- It provides limited search results
- It generates its revenue from ads
Mojeek
This Google alternatives search is solely UK based and focuses on privacy. Mojeek is the best search engine when it comes to emotion, it uses deep machine learning to assess the feels of a webpage. From your search intent it can tell if you want a result that is happy, formal, informal, sad, etc. Images also displayed on this search engine powered by Bing and Pixabay.
Pros
- It can relate to a user’s interest with optional features of emotional search.
- It has secured privacy settings.
- It is independent from big technology companies.
- It doesn’t use ads or product placement for search data.
Cons
- It has limitations in terms of results to navigational and review searches.
- It doesn’t fit into all keyword search
- It requires a larger indexation.
Openverse
This type of alternative search engine is a copyright-free search intent. It’s the best search engine that offers undiluted content such as blog posts, music for video, and image search without worrying about copyright infringement.
Pros
- It helps you filter results for image type, file type, license, source, etc.
- It prohibits the commercial use of items under license.
Cons
- it provides limited data due to constraints to traffic from the Openverse API.
Wiki.com
This is a knowledge-based Google alternative search engine for communal-led information. This is a web-based collaborative medium that allows users to store search history, create and modify in a structured manner. This is a great search engine for experts, business investors, etc. that help them manage information and share efficiently.
It contains links to resource pages for connected networks, making it easy for users to access data. An example is the wiki-based fan website for movies, books, Tv shows, etc.
Pros
- Beneficial for business enterprises.
- It enables uploading packages and version control for users to track.
- It has a simple user interface for everyone.
Cons
- The software program might be too technical for inexperienced users.
- It has a limited search function.
Swisscows
It’s a family-friendly semantic search browser that respects the user’s details. It uses AI for its operational activities to answer questions of users accurately. Search engines use the search term and search engine queries to provide information to the user while maintaining privacy-focused search engines.
Pros:
- It is known for anonymity and doesn’t track user data
Cons:
- It provides limited data sources for search results.
SearX
SearX is programmed in Python language and is highly scalable. You can search maps, videos, images, etc. in multiple languages. This is an open-source search engine that maintains privacy while sending users directly to result sites.
Pros
- It allows users to customize private models with their computers.
- It offers a variety of resource pages valuable to users.
- It is a free access search engine which aggregates results above 70 searches.
- It offers administrative API and supports offline engines.
Cons
- It requires one who is technically inclined.
- Bugs may be encountered by search queries triggered by unknown search engines.
Yandex
This search engine was developed by Russian developers in 1990. It is a free browser and is available to Android. It is used mainly for Data management, Online advertising, Artificial intelligence, and Smart home technology. The Yandex search engine has a built-in technology that repels harmful site pages and blocks them.
Pros
- Yandex provides an efficient data structure for businesses with large data.
- It provides software for training app metrics to understand user’s search intent.
- It provides vehement security and privacy-based search engine.
Cons
- It contains large data content that may distract users.
- It clusters the web due to ads revenue.
DuckDuckGo
This is an internet search engine founded in 2008. It maintains data privacy and does not track or record user profiles It is the 3rd most popular search engine in Australia with approximately 35 million users used to search information.
Pros
- There is no search leakage of personal details.
- No personalized target ads.
- You have access to broader range of information.
Cons
- It has fewer utility services like maps, emails, and others.
- It is not as convenient as other search engine like Google.
Conclusion
Having seen other Google alternatives search engines, you can now tell that Google might not fit your preference when it comes to your search needs. It is advisable to explore more of these search engines and see how it impacts your daily routines.
No doubt, Google remains the biggest search engine for now, and it can be strange using other search engines, but from this article, you can now see the limitations surrounding this prominent search engine so that you can tailor your queries appropriately
