Search engines, including web search engines, selection-based search engines, metasearch engines, desktop search tools, and web portals and vertical market websites have a search facility for online databases.
Name | Language | Backend ownership |
---|---|---|
Ask.com | Multilingual | |
Baidu | Chinese | Baidu |
Brave Search | Multilingual | Brave |
Dogpile | English | Metasearch engine |
DuckDuckGo | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
Ecosia | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
Elasticsearch | Multilingual | Apache 2.0 until 2021, then Elasticsearch |
Exalead | Multilingual | Cloudview |
Excite† | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
Gigablast | English | Apache License 2.0 |
Multilingual | ||
HotBot | English | Microsoft Bing |
Kagi | English | Metasearch engine and Kagi Inc |
Lycos | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
MetaCrawler | English | Metasearch engine |
Microsoft Bing | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
Mojeek | Multilingual | Mojeek |
Opensearch | Multilingual | Apache License 2.0 (Elasticsearch fork) |
Petal | Multilingual | Huawei |
Qwant | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
Searx | Multilingual | Metasearch engine |
Sogou | Multilingual | Tencent |
Startpage | English | |
Swisscows | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
WebCrawler | English | Microsoft Bing |
YaCy | Multilingual | GPL-2.0-or-later |
Yahoo! Search† | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
Yandex | Multilingual | Yandex |
Youdao† | Chinese | NetEase |
You.com | English | Microsoft Bing |
† Main website is a portal
Name | Language | Country |
---|---|---|
Accoona | Chinese, English | China, United States |
Biglobe | Japanese | Japan |
Daum | Korean | Korea |
Nate | Korean | Korea |
Egerin | Kurdish | Sweden [1] [2] [3] |
Fireball | German, English | Germany |
Goo | Japanese | Japan |
Leit.is | Icelandic, English | Iceland |
Najdi.si | Slovenian | Slovenia |
Naver | Korean | Korea |
Parsijoo | Persian | Iran |
Pipilika (defunct) | Bengali, English | Bangladesh |
Rambler | Russian | Russia |
Rediff | India | |
Search.ch | Switzerland | |
Sesam (defunct) | Norway, Sweden | |
Seznam | Czech | Czech Republic |
Walla! | Israel | |
Yahoo! Japan | Japanese | Japan (Google backend) |
Yongzin | Tibetan | China |
ZipLocal | English | Canada, United States |
General:
Academic materials only:
Search engines dedicated to a specific kind of information
These search engines work across the BitTorrent protocol.
Desktop search engines listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.
Name | Platform | Remarks | License |
---|---|---|---|
HP Autonomy | Windows | IDOL Enterprise Desktop Search, HP Autonomy Universal Search. [5] | Proprietary, commercial |
Beagle | Linux | Open-source desktop search tool for Linux based on Lucene. Unmaintained since 2009. | A mix of the X11/MIT License and the Apache License |
Copernic Desktop Search | Windows | Major desktop search program. The full trial version downgrades after the trial period automatically to the free version, which is (anno 2018) limited to indexing a maximum of 10.000 files. | Proprietary (30 day trial) |
DocFetcher | Cross-platform | Open-source desktop search tool for Windows and Linux, based on Apache Lucene | Eclipse Public License |
dtSearch Desktop | Windows | Proprietary (30 day trial) | |
Everything | Windows | Find files and folders by name instantly on NTFS volumes | Freeware |
GNOME Storage | Linux | Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux | GPL |
Google Desktop | Linux, Mac OS X, Windows | Integrates with the main Google search engine page. As of September 14, 2011, Google has discontinued this product. | Freeware |
ISYS Search Software | Windows | ISYS:Desktop search software. | Proprietary (14-day trial) |
KRunner | Linux | ||
Locate32 | Windows | Graphical port of Unix's locate & updatedb | BSD License [6] |
Lookeen | Windows | Desktop search product with Outlook plugin and limited support for other formats via IFilters, uses Lucene search engine. | Proprietary (14-day trial) [7] |
Nepomuk | Linux | Open-source semantic desktop search tool for Linux. Has been replaced by Baloo in KDE Applications from release 4.13 onward. | License SA 3.0 and the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2 |
Recoll | Linux, Unix, Windows, macOS | Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux | GPL [8] |
Spotlight | macOS | Found in Apple Mac OS X "Tiger" and later OS X releases. | Proprietary |
Strigi | Linux, Unix, Solaris, Mac OS X and Windows | Cross-platform open-source desktop search engine. Unmaintained since 2011-06-02 [9] . | LGPL v2 [10] |
Terrier Search Engine | Linux, Mac OS X, Unix | Desktop search for Windows, Mac OS X (Tiger), Unix/Linux. | MPL v1.1 [11] |
Tracker | Linux, Unix | Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux | GPL v2 [12] |
Tropes Zoom | Windows | Semantic Search Engine (no longer available) [13] | Freeware and commercial |
Unity Dash | Linux | Part of Ubuntu Desktop | GPL v3, [14] LGPL v2.1 [15] |
Windows Search | Windows | Part of Windows Vista and later OSs. Available as Windows Desktop Search for Windows XP and Server 2003. Does not support indexing UNC paths on x64 systems. | Proprietary |
X1 Desktop Search | Windows | Major desktop search product along with Copernic Desktop Search | Proprietary (14-day trial) [16] |
Wumpus | Cross platform | Desktop search focused on information retrieval research | GPL |
Name | Language |
---|---|
Dogpile | English |
Excite | English |
Info.com | English |
Kayak.com | Multilingual |
Mamma.com | |
MetaCrawler | English |
MetaGer | Multilingual |
Mobissimo | Multilingual |
Otalo.com | English |
Publisher's clearinghouse Search and Win | |
Searx | Multilingual |
Skyscanner | Multilingual |
Wego.com | Multilingual |
Name | Language |
---|---|
Seeks (open-source) | English |
YaCy (free and fully decentralized) | Multilingual |
Name | Description | Speciality |
---|---|---|
Evi | Specialises in knowledge base and semantic search | answer engine |
Swoogle | Searching over 10,000 ontologies | Semantic web documents |
Yebol | defunct | |
Yummly | Semantic web search for food, cooking, and recipes | food related |
Name | Backend ownership | Demise |
---|---|---|
iWon | Ask.com | Shut down after AT&T merger[ citation needed ] |
Teoma | Ask.com | Merged to Ask.com which still uses its algorithms |
A9.com | Microsoft Bing | Redirect to Amazon homepage (parent company) |
AOL | Google until 2015, then Microsoft Bing | Merged to Yahoo! |
Alexa Internet | Microsoft Bing | Bought by Amazon in 1999, shut down in 2021 |
Ciao! | Microsoft Bing | Shut down in 2018 |
Ms. Dewey | Microsoft Bing | January 2009 |
Groovle | Taken over by Google after Google sued for name similarity | |
MySpace Search | Function taken over by Google in 2006 | |
Mystery Seeker | Novelty "search"; went offline in 2017 | |
Netscape | Now redirects to AOL | |
Ripple | as of 2017 at the latest | |
Ecocho | Google, then Yahoo! | |
Forestle | Google, then Yahoo! | Redirected to Ecosia in 2011 |
Yippy | IBM Watson | Redirected to DuckDuckGo in 2021 |
Grams | Grams (anonymous owner) | Closed in 2017 |
robots.txt is the filename used for implementing the Robots Exclusion Protocol, a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the website they are allowed to visit.
MSN is an American web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.
Desktop search tools search within a user's own computer files as opposed to searching the Internet. These tools are designed to find information on the user's PC, including web browser history, e-mail archives, text documents, sound files, images, and video. A variety of desktop search programs are now available; see this list for examples. Most desktop search programs are standalone applications. Desktop search products are software alternatives to the search software included in the operating system, helping users sift through desktop files, emails, attachments, and more.
Startpage is a Dutch search engine company that highlights privacy as its distinguishing feature. The website advertises that it allows users to obtain Google Search results while protecting users' privacy by not storing personal information or search data and removing all trackers. Startpage.com also includes an Anonymous View browsing feature that allows users the option to open search results via proxy for increased anonymity.
Yahoo! Search is a search engine owned and operated by Yahoo!, using Microsoft Bing to power results.
Microformats (μF) are a set of defined HTML classes created to serve as consistent and descriptive metadata about an element, designating it as representing a certain type of data. They allow software to process the information reliably by having set classes refer to a specific type of data rather than being arbitrary.
Microsoft Advertising is an online advertising platform developed by Microsoft, where advertisers bid to display brief ads, service offers, product listings and videos to web users. It provides pay per click advertising on search engines Bing, Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo, as well as on other websites, mobile apps, and videos.
Microsoft Bing, commonly referred to as Bing, is a search engine owned and operated by Microsoft. The service traces its roots back to Microsoft's earlier search engines, including MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search. Bing offers a broad spectrum of search services, encompassing web, video, image, and map search products, all developed using ASP.NET.
A search engine results page (SERP) is a webpage that is displayed by a search engine in response to a query by a user. The main component of a SERP is the listing of results that are returned by the search engine in response to a keyword query.
Black Duck Open Hub, formerly Ohloh, is a website which provides a web services suite and online community platform that aims to index the open-source software development community. It was founded by former Microsoft managers Jason Allen and Scott Collison in 2004 and joined by the developer Robin Luckey. As of 15 January 2016, the site lists 669,601 open-source projects, 681,345 source control repositories, 3,848,524 contributors and 31,688,426,179 lines of code.
Info is a metasearch engine, which as of 2013, provided results from search engines Google, Yahoo!, Ask, Bing, Yandex, and Open Directory. As of 2004, news search was powered by Topix.net, Info.com's web search engine information was powered by Shopping.com and Info.com had White Page and Yellow Page search. As of 2013, Info.com also had search plugins for Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox.
DuckDuckGo is an American software company that offers a number of products intended to help people protect their online privacy. The flagship product is a search engine that has been praised by privacy advocates. Subsequent products include extensions for all major web browsers and a custom DuckDuckGo web browser.
Schema.org is a reference website that publishes documentation and guidelines for using structured data mark-up on web-pages. Its main objective is to standardize HTML tags to be used by webmasters for creating rich results about a certain topic of interest. It is a part of the semantic web project, which aims to make document mark-up codes more readable and meaningful to both humans and machines.
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.
Qwant is a French search engine that launched in February 2013. Qwant is privacy focused, claiming to not track users, resell personal data, or bias the display of search results.
Egerin is a web search engine. It is the first search engine in Kurdish language and is focused on providing a fully functional search and blog system, including videos, image, and news for the Kurds.
Searx is a free and open-source metasearch engine, available under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3, with the aim of protecting the privacy of its users. To this end, Searx does not share users' IP addresses or search history with the search engines from which it gathers results. Tracking cookies served by the search engines are blocked, preventing user-profiling-based results modification. By default, Searx queries are submitted via HTTP POST, to prevent users' query keywords from appearing in webserver logs. Searx was inspired by the Seeks project, though it does not implement Seeks' peer-to-peer user-sourced results ranking.
Ontotext GraphDB is a graph database and knowledge discovery tool compliant with RDF and SPARQL and available as a high-availability cluster. Ontotext GraphDB is used in various European research projects.
Brave Search is a search engine developed by Brave Software, Inc., which is set as the default search engine for Brave web browser users in certain countries.