Comparison of web search engines

Last updated

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).

Contents

Defunct or acquired search engines are not listed here.

Search crawlers

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

Search engineFounder(s)CompanyLaunchedSoftware distribution licensePages indexedDaily direct queriesResults countAdvertisements
Ahmia Juha Nurmi2014 Proprietary
AOL William von Meister 1999 Proprietary
Ask.com IAC 1996 Proprietary Un­knownUn­knownYesYes
Baidu Baidu, Inc 2000 Proprietary
Blackle 2007 Proprietary Un­knownUn­known
Brave Search Brendan Eich and Brian BondyBrave Software, Inc.2021 Proprietary Un­knownUn­knownNoYes
DuckDuckGo Gabriel WeinbergDuck Duck Go, Inc.2008Mixed
Ecosia Christian Kroll2009 Proprietary NoYes
Exalead Exalead 2000 Proprietary Un­knownUn­knownYesNo
Fireball Fireball Labs GmbH1996 Proprietary
Gigablast Independent2000Free>1 billion [1] Un­knownYesNo
Google Search Larry Page, Sergey Brin & Scott Hassan Alphabet Inc. 1998 Proprietary hundreds of billions [2] 9.022 billion [3] YesYes
Kiddle 2014 Proprietary
KidRex 2008 Proprietary
KidzSearch 2005 Proprietary
Lycos 1995 Proprietary
Microsoft Bing Microsoft 1998/2009 Proprietary Un­knownUn­knownYesYes
Million Short 2012
Mojeek Mojeek 2004 Proprietary 5 billion [4] Un­knownYesYes [5]
Naver Naver Corp.1999 Proprietary Un­knownUn­knownNoYes
Parsijoo 2010 Proprietary
Petal Huawei 2020 Proprietary Un­knownUn­knownYesYes
Qwant Qwant 2013 Proprietary 20 billion [6] 10 million[ citation needed ]NoYes
Seznam.cz 1996 Proprietary
Sogou Tencent 2010 Proprietary Un­knownUn­knownYesYes
Swisscows Swisscows2014 Proprietary Un­knownUn­knownYesYes
WebCrawler 1994 Proprietary
Yahoo! Search Yahoo! 1995 Proprietary Un­knownYesYes
Yandex Search Yandex 1997 Proprietary >2 billion [7] Un­knownYesYes
Youdao 2007 Proprietary

    Digital rights

    Search engineServer's location(s)Dedicated serversData centerCloud computing HTTPS available Tor gateway available Proxy gateway search links available
    Ahmia YesYes
    AOL YesNo
    Ask.com YesNo
    Baidu ChinaYesNoUn­known
    Blackle NoNo
    Brave Search YesYes
    DuckDuckGo [8] USANoVerizon Internet Services Amazon EC2 YesYesNo
    Ecosia YesNo
    Exalead NoNo
    Fireball YesNo
    Gigablast USAYes [9] Yes [9] No
    Google Search USAYesGoogle data centersYes [10] NoUn­known
    Kiddle YesNo
    KidRex YesNo
    KidzSearch YesNo
    Lycos YesNo
    Microsoft Bing USA / ChinaYesYesNoUn­known
    Mojeek UKYesCustodian Data CentresYesNoUn­known
    Naver YesNo
    Parsijoo YesNo
    Petal FranceYesNoUn­known
    Qwant FranceYesYesUn­knownUn­known
    Seznam.cz YesNo
    Sogou ChinaYesNoUn­known
    Swisscows YesNo
    WebCrawler YesNo
    Yahoo! Search USAPartialYes [11] NoUn­known
    Yandex Search RussiaYesYes [12] NoUn­known
    Youdao YesNo

      Tracking and surveillance

      Search engine HTTP tracking cookies Personalized results [lower-alpha 1] [lower-alpha 2] IP address tracking [lower-alpha 3] [lower-alpha 2] Information sharing [lower-alpha 2] [ clarification needed ]Warrantless wiretapping of unencrypted backend traffic [lower-alpha 2]
      Ahmia No
      AOL Yes
      Ask.com Yes
      Baidu YesUn­knownUn­knownUn­knownUn­known
      Blackle No
      Brave Search No
      DuckDuckGo [8] [13] NoNoNoNo [14] No[ citation needed ]
      Ecosia No [15] NoNoNoUn­known
      Exalead No
      Fireball Yes
      Gigablast NoNoNo [9] No [9] No [9]
      Google Search YesDefault [16] Yes [17] Yes [17] 2013 and prior [17] [18]
      Kiddle No
      KidRex No
      KidzSearch No
      Lycos No
      Microsoft Bing YesYesYes [17] Yes [17] 2014 and prior [17] [19] [20]
      Mojeek NoNoNoNoUn­known
      Naver No
      Parsijoo ?
      Petal YesUn­knownUn­knownUn­knownUn­known
      Qwant NoNoNoNoNo[ citation needed ]
      Seznam.cz No
      Sogou YesUn­knownUn­knownUn­knownUn­known
      Swisscows No
      WebCrawler Yes
      Yahoo! Search YesUn­knownYes [17] Yes [17] 2014 and prior [17] [21]
      Yandex Search YesYes [22] Un­knownLimited [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. 1 2 3 4 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

      Related Research Articles

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Search</span> Search engine from Google

      Google Search is a search engine operated by Google. It allows users to search for information on the Internet by entering keywords or phrases. Google Search uses algorithms to analyze and rank websites based on their relevance to the search query. It is the most popular search engine worldwide.

      robots.txt Standard used to advise web crawlers and scrapers not to index a web page or site

      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.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">MUSCULAR</span> Joint UK and USA surveillance program

      MUSCULAR (DS-200B), located in the United Kingdom, is the name of a surveillance program jointly operated by Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) that was revealed by documents released by Edward Snowden and interviews with knowledgeable officials. GCHQ is the primary operator of the program. GCHQ and the NSA have secretly broken into the main communications links that connect the data centers of Yahoo! and Google. Substantive information about the program was made public at the end of October 2013.

      Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storage, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and display of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. Privacy concerns have been articulated from the beginnings of large-scale computer sharing and especially relate to mass surveillance.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Yandex</span> Russian multinational technology company

      Yandex LLC is a Russian multinational technology company providing Internet-related products and services, including an Internet search engine called Yandex Search, launched in 1997, information services, e-commerce, transportation, maps and navigation, mobile applications, and online advertising. Yandex Holding Company was incorporated in 2000. As of 2016, it primarily served audiences in Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Turkey and countries with a significant Russian-speaking population.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Search engine</span> Software system for finding relevant information on the Web

      A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages and other relevant information on the Web in response to a user's query. The user inputs a query within a web browser or a mobile app, and the search results are often a list of hyperlinks, accompanied by textual summaries and images. Users also have the option of limiting the search to a specific type of results, such as images, videos, or news.

      The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable webmail providers who offer a web interface in English.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Info.com</span>

      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.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">DuckDuckGo</span> American software company and Web search engine

      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 popular web browsers and a new web browser.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Evercookie</span> JavaScript application programming interface

      Evercookie is a JavaScript application programming interface (API) that identifies and reproduces intentionally deleted cookies on the clients' browser storage. It was created by Samy Kamkar in 2010 to demonstrate the possible infiltration from the websites that use respawning. Websites that have adopted this mechanism can identify users even if they attempt to delete the previously stored cookies.

      Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service developed by Google. Launched on April 24, 2012, Google Drive allows users to store files in the cloud, synchronize files across devices, and share files. In addition to a web interface, Google Drive offers apps with offline capabilities for Windows and macOS computers, and Android and iOS smartphones and tablets. Google Drive encompasses Google Docs, Google Sheets, and Google Slides, which are a part of the Google Docs Editors office suite that permits collaborative editing of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, drawings, forms, and more. Files created and edited through the Google Docs suite are saved in Google Drive.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Yandex Browser</span> Web browser developed by Russian company Yandex

      Yandex Browser is a freeware web browser developed by the Russian technology corporation Yandex that uses the Blink web browser engine and is based on the Chromium open source project. The browser checks webpage security with the Yandex security system and checks downloaded files with Kaspersky Anti-Virus. The browser also uses Opera Software's Turbo technology to speed web browsing on slow connections.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Gigablast</span> Free and open-source web search engine

      Gigablast was an American free and open-source web search engine and directory. Founded in 2000, it was an independent engine and web crawler, developed and maintained by Matt Wells, a former Infoseek employee and New Mexico Tech graduate. During early April 2023, the website went offline without warning and without any official statement.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Qwant</span> Search engine based in France

      Qwant is a French search engine that launched in February 2013. Qwant claims to respect the privacy of its users by not tracking them for advertising purposes or reselling their personal data, as well as being unbiased in the display of results.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Timeline of web search engines</span>

      This page provides a full timeline of web search engines, starting from the WHOis in 1982, the Archie search engine in 1990, and subsequent developments in the field. It is complementary to the history of web search engines page that provides more qualitative detail on the history.

      Disconnect is a partly open source browser extension and mobile app designed to stop non-consensual third party trackers, and providing private web search and private web browsing. On mobile, it is available for Android and iPhone. It was developed by Brian Kennish and Casey Oppenheim. Disconnect-Search had once been the default search engine of the security-focused Tor Browser, which now uses DuckDuckGo.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Mojeek</span> Search engine

      Mojeek is a 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.

      Search engine privacy is a subset of internet privacy that deals with user data being collected by search engines. Both types of privacy fall under the umbrella of information privacy. Privacy concerns regarding search engines can take many forms, such as the ability for search engines to log individual search queries, browsing history, IP addresses, and cookies of users, and conducting user profiling in general. The collection of personally identifiable information (PII) of users by search engines is referred to as tracking.

      <span class="mw-page-title-main">Brave Search</span> Search engine

      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.

      References

      1. "about". gigablast.com. Archived from the original on 2018-10-01. Retrieved 2018-02-12.
      2. "How search works, organizing information". Google. Retrieved 21 December 2021.
      3. "Google Annual Search Statistics". 23 April 2017. Retrieved 3 May 2017.
      4. "Mojeek Surpasses 5 Billion Pages" . Retrieved 6 June 2022.
      5. "Ads on Mojeek".
      6. Qwant (2018-11-20). "Web indexation: where does Qwant's independence stand?". Medium. Retrieved 2019-02-13.
      7. "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.
      8. 1 2 Holwerda, Thom (June 21, 2011), "DuckDuckGo: The Privacy-centric Alternative to Google", OSNews , retrieved March 30, 2012
      9. 1 2 3 4 5 "Gigablast - The Private Search Engine". 2013. Archived from the original on 2018-10-15. Retrieved 2017-04-29.
      10. "Google Makes HTTPS Encryption Default for Search". eWeek. Retrieved 2014-03-31.[ permanent dead link ]
      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. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 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.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: location (link)