Comparison of search engines

For the market share of the most popular search engines, see Most popular Internet search engines. For search proxies and multi-engine searches, see List of metasearch engines.

Web search engines are listed in tables below for comparison purposes. The first table lists the company behind the engine, volume and ad support and identifies the nature of the software being used as free software or proprietary software. The second and third table lists internet privacy aspects along with other technical parameters, such as whether the engine provides personalization (alternatively viewed as a filter bubble).

Defunct or acquired search engines are not listed here.

Search crawlers

Current search engines with independent crawlers, as of December 2018.

Search engine	Founder(s)	Company	Launched	Software distribution license	Pages indexed	Daily direct queries	Results count	Advertisements
Ahmia	Juha Nurmi	Juha Nurmi	2014	Proprietary
AOL	William von Meister		1999	Proprietary
Ask.com	Garrett Gruener And David Warthen	IAC	1996	Proprietary	Un­known	Un­known	Yes	Yes
Baidu	Robin Li Yanhong	Baidu, Inc	2000	Proprietary
Brave Search	Brendan Eich and Brian Bondy	Brave Software, Inc.	2021	Proprietary	Un­known	Un­known	No	Yes
DuckDuckGo	Gabriel Weinberg	Duck Duck Go, Inc.	2008	Mixed
Ecosia	Christian Kroll		2009	Proprietary			No	Yes
Exalead	François Bourdoncle and Patrice Bertin	Exalead	2000	Proprietary	Un­known	Un­known	Yes	No
Fireball	Oli Kai Paulus, Helmut Hoffer von Ankershoffen, Nurhan Yildirim, and Benhui Chen [1]	Fireball Labs GmbH	1996	Proprietary
Gigablast	Matt Wells	Independent	2000	Free	>1 billion [2]	Un­known	Yes	Yes
Google Search	Larry Page, Sergey Brin & Scott Hassan	Alphabet Inc.	1997	Proprietary	hundreds of billions [3]	9.022 billion [4]	Yes	Yes
Kiddle			2014	Proprietary
KidRex			2008	Proprietary
KidzSearch	Dale Bock		2005	Proprietary
Lycos	Michael Loren Mauldin		1995	Proprietary
Microsoft Bing		Microsoft	1998/2009	Proprietary	Un­known	Un­known	Yes	Yes
Million Short			2012
Mojeek	Marc Smith	Mojeek	2004	Proprietary	5 billion [5]	Un­known	Yes	Yes [6]
Naver	Kim Sang-Hun	Naver Corp.	1999	Proprietary	Un­known	Un­known	No	Yes
Parsijoo			2010	Proprietary
Petal		Huawei	2020	Proprietary	Un­known	Un­known	Yes	Yes
Qwant	Éric Léandri	Qwant	2013	Proprietary	20 billion [7]	10 million[ citation needed ]	No	Yes
Seznam.cz	Ivo Lukačovič		1996	Proprietary
Sogou		Tencent	2010	Proprietary	Un­known	Un­known	Yes	Yes
Swisscows	Andreas Wiebe	Swisscows	2014	Proprietary	Un­known	Un­known	Yes	Yes
WebCrawler	Brian Pinkerton		1994	Proprietary
Yahoo! Search	Jerry Yang & David Filo	Yahoo!	1995	Proprietary		Un­known	Yes	Yes
Yandex Search	Arkady Volozh	Yandex	1997	Proprietary	>2 billion [8]	Un­known	Yes	Yes
Youdao	Feng Zhou		2007	Proprietary

Digital rights

See also: Comparison of webmail providers § Digital rights, PRISM, MUSCULAR, Internet privacy, and digital rights

Search engine	Server's location(s)	Dedicated servers	Data center	Cloud computing	HTTPS available	Tor gateway available	Proxy gateway search links available
Ahmia					Yes	Yes
AOL					Yes	No
Ask.com					Yes	No
Baidu	China				Yes	No	Un­known
Blackle					No	No
Brave Search					Yes	Yes
DuckDuckGo [9]	USA	No	Verizon Internet Services	Amazon EC2	Yes	Yes	No
Ecosia	USA	No			Yes	No
Exalead					No	No
Fireball					Yes	No
Gigablast	USA				Yes [10]	Yes [10]	No
Google Search	USA	Yes	Google data centers		Yes	No	Un­known
Kiddle					Yes	No
KidRex					Yes	No
KidzSearch					Yes	No
Lycos					Yes	No
Microsoft Bing	USA / China	Yes			Yes	No	Un­known
Mojeek	UK	Yes	Custodian Data Centres		Yes	No	Un­known
Naver					Yes	No
Parsijoo					Yes	No
Petal	France				Yes	No	Un­known
Qwant	France	Yes			Yes	Un­known	Un­known
Seznam.cz					Yes	No
Sogou	China				Yes	No	Un­known
Swisscows					Yes	No
WebCrawler					Yes	No
Yahoo! Search	USA	Partial			Yes [11]	No	Un­known
Yandex Search	Russia	Yes			Yes [12]	No	Un­known
Youdao					Yes	No

Tracking and surveillance

Search engine	HTTP tracking cookies	Personalized results [a] [b]	IP address tracking [c] [b]	Information sharing [b] [ clarification needed ]	Warrantless wiretapping of unencrypted backend traffic [b]
Ahmia	No
AOL	Yes
Ask.com	Yes
Baidu	Yes	Un­known	Un­known	Un­known	Un­known
Blackle	No
Brave Search	No
DuckDuckGo [9] [13]	No	No	No	No [14]	No[ citation needed ]
Ecosia	No [15]	No	No	No	Un­known
Exalead	No
Fireball	Yes
Gigablast	No	No	No [10]	No [10]	No [10]
Google Search	Yes	Default [16]	Yes [17]	Yes [17]	2013 and prior [17] [18]
Kiddle	No
KidRex	No
KidzSearch	No
Lycos	No
Microsoft Bing	Yes	Yes	Yes [17]	Yes [17]	2014 and prior [17] [19] [20]
Mojeek	No	No	No	No	Un­known
Naver	No
Parsijoo	?
Petal	Yes	Un­known	Un­known	Un­known	Un­known
Qwant	No	No	No	No	No[ citation needed ]
Seznam.cz	No
Sogou	Yes	Un­known	Un­known	Un­known	Un­known
Swisscows	No
WebCrawler	Yes
Yahoo! Search	Yes	Un­known	Yes [17]	Yes [17]	2014 and prior [17] [21]
Yandex Search	Yes	Yes [22]	Un­known	Limited [23]	Un­known
Youdao	Yes

1. The results of the search are arranged for the user in accordance to their interests as determined from previous search queries or other information available to the search engine.
2. Cannot be verified independently, as the information is handled by servers not accessible by the public.
3. Tracking the user has to be conducted in order to provide personalized search results.

See also

• Comparison of webmail providers – often merged with web search engines by companies that host both services
• List of search engines
• Search engine privacy

References

1. "Fireball (search engine)", Wikipedia, 2025-02-05, retrieved 2025-03-15
2. "about". gigablast.com. Archived from the original on 2018-10-01. Retrieved 2018-02-12.
3. "How search works, organizing information". Google. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
4. "Google Annual Search Statistics". 23 April 2017. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
5. "Mojeek Surpasses 5 Billion Pages" . Retrieved 6 June 2022.
6. "Ads on Mojeek".
7. Qwant (2018-11-20). "Web indexation: where does Qwant's independence stand?". Medium. Retrieved 2019-02-13.
8. "SEC Filing 2011" (PDF). Form 20-F. Our search index includes billions of webpages..: Yandex N.V. 31 December 2011. p. 45. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 June 2012. Retrieved 21 April 2012.
9. Holwerda, Thom (June 21, 2011), "DuckDuckGo: The Privacy-centric Alternative to Google", OSNews , retrieved March 30, 2012
10. "Gigablast - The Private Search Engine". 2013. Archived from the original on 2018-10-15. Retrieved 2017-04-29.
11. Danny Sullivan (22 January 2014). "Yahoo Search Goes Secure". Search Engine Land . Retrieved 31 March 2014.
12. "Yandex.Direct switches to HTTPS". Yandex. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
13. "DuckDuckGo Privacy". 2012-04-11. Retrieved 2017-04-29.
14. Weinberg, Gabriel (2010-08-10). "DuckDuckGo now operates a Tor exit enclave". gabrielweinberg.com. Archived from the original on 2014-07-26. Retrieved 2014-07-01.
15. "Learn more about our privacy policy and the data that we do collect" . Retrieved July 18, 2019.
16. "Turn off search history personalization" . Retrieved July 11, 2013.
17. Johnson, Kevin; Martin, Scott; O'Donnell, Jayne; Winter, Michael (June 15, 2013). "Reports: NSA Siphons Data from 9 Major Net Firms". USA Today . Retrieved June 6, 2013.
18. Gallagher, Sean (2013-11-06). "Googlers say "F*** you" to NSA, company encrypts internal network". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2017-04-29.
19. Danny Yadron (2013-12-05). "Microsoft Compares NSA to 'Advanced Persistent Threat' - Digits - WSJ". Blogs.wsj.com. Retrieved 2014-01-15.
20. Tom Warren (2013-12-05). "Microsoft labels US government a 'persistent threat' in plan to cut off NSA spying". The Verge. Retrieved 2017-04-29.
21. Brandom, Russell (2013-11-18). "Yahoo plans to encrypt all internal data by early 2014 to keep the NSA out". The Verge. Retrieved 2017-04-29.
22. "Компания Яндекс — Персональный поиск" . Retrieved May 22, 2013.
23. "Privacy Policy – Legal Documents". Yandex.Company. 3.3.1.: LLC Yandex. 15 November 2011. Retrieved 21 April 2012.