If you’ve ever poked around your browser’s search engine settings you’ve probably seen that you can choose from several different search engines as your default. Search engines scan sites across the internet and list relevant results based on your search. Your browser is not your search engine, though you can type in your browser’s search omnibox to access your search engine. Each search engine has a variety of strengths and weaknesses that set them apart. In this article, we’ve listed a selection of the top, most relied-on search engines available.
Bing
Bing is Microsoft’s own search engine. Its origins stem from Microsoft’s other search engines: MSN Search, Windows Live Search, and Live Search. While it lacks some key features, it is still a powerful and easy-to-use search engine that performs incredibly well.
Pros:
- Second most popular search engine
- Favors older, established
- sites for more reliable information
- Doesn’t rate blogs, prefers home pages and landing sites
- Arguably the best video indexing of any search engine
- Can search for both hidden and non-hidden content
- Pins instant answers to the top of the search page
- Integrates with other Microsoft software and devices
- Most features are simple to use
Cons:
- Censors result in certain countries
- Search results may change from user to user for the same search query
Yahoo!
In 2009, Yahoo! teamed up with Microsoft to use Bing to power Yahoo! Search. A few years later, they made a similar deal with Google to add many of their search engine’s features to Yahoo! search. They have recently reverted back to being fully powered by Microsoft Bing. As a result, Yahoo!’s search engine has many of the strengths of Bing.com but with some additional key features.
Pros:
- Most of Bing’s features included
- Links to all other Yahoo! products, and services
- Little clutter on the search pages
- Most features are simple to use
- Includes yellow pages search
- Use special shortcuts such as !eBay or !wiki to search within other sites from the search bar
- Provides responses from Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo!’s user-driven question and answer forum, for relevant searches.
Cons:
- Censors results in certain countries
- Search results may change from user to user for the same search query
Google is the most popular search engine for good reason. Not only does it provide personalized results, but it also has many additional features that make searching easier and faster.
Pros:
- Personalized search results
- Has the largest development team, meaning lots of support and behind-the-scenes updates
- Complex algorithms for search results
- Prefers sites that update frequently to deliver more recent information
- Uses its own search index and tools for an all-in-one experience
- Pins the result that is most likely to answer your query to the top of the page
- Includes many extra features such as Maps, Images, News, and Videos
- Includes shopping, books, finance, scholar, and flights categories for search results
Cons:
- Stores and uses lots of personal information
- Tells sites what you searched to get to that site
- Constantly testing new features and changes that may confuse users
- Censors results in certain countries
- Search results may change from user to user for the same search query
- Video searching is not as accurate as Bing
DuckDuckGo
Unlike other search engines, DuckDuckGo prides itself on respecting your privacy. While it may lack the features and scale that other engines have, it makes up for it in simplicity and trustworthiness.
Pros:
- No tracking cookies, IP address tracking, or information sharing.
- Supports Tor gateways, meaning better privacy
- Doesn’t censor search results in any country
- Can answer a search query without clicking on any links
- Consistent results across all users when searching the same terms
- Uses mainly open-source technologies that are safe and trustworthy
Cons:
- Can have less personalized results because it doesn’t store identifying information
- Doesn’t have dedicated servers and relies on other companies’ resources.
- Small development team so changes and updates occur more slowly
- Doesn’t have its own search index and instead uses tools like Yahoo, Bing, Yelp, and others
- Video searching is not as accurate as Bing
- Fewer search features
Conclusion
Casual internet users will likely prefer Google or Bing. Yahoo! is ideal for those who like Bing’s features but would prefer to use them from a familiar site. If you like your privacy, choose DuckDuckGo. Regardless of which search engine you like, you can set it in OneLaunch and always rely on the unique dock and search box to get the results you want.
Check out a YouTube Video on this topic from the OneLaunch Team: How to search the web more efficiently with OneLaunch
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