Most users use the Google search engine to search the Internet. Globally, Google has nearly 90% market share (as of July 2021: 87%). The remaining 10% will be split among competitors. In addition to Bing and Yahoo, this also includes smaller search engines, which are often useful: on the one hand, Google doesn’t show all the results, and on the other hand, surfing behavior is easier to understand here. With alternatives, it is sometimes possible to find different results in a search query. Also, alternatives often guarantee better data protection. Also, there are special search engines that do not store user data or use several other search engines.
Ixquick
Ixquick and DuckDuckGo are two well-known search engines that users can use as an alternative to Google. Ixquick is a metasearch engine from the Netherlands with a German interface. The provider advertises that it does not store any user data. Metasearch uses search results from multiple search engines and displays them in one interface. Ixquick and Startpage have been merged since 2016. Both are from the same company in the Netherlands.
Duck Duck Go
Like Google, DuckDuckGo is an American search engine, but it takes data protection very seriously. Here, other search engines are also involved to find suitable results. DuckDuckGo is stored as a search engine in many browsers and can be used as a standard search.
Ecosia
Ecosia search engine is inspired by ecology. The German search engine donates most of its revenue to nature conservation groups. For some time now, the focus has been on planting trees in Burkina Faso. Ecosia is primarily used with Bing for search results.
Qwant
Qwant also provides anonymous search capabilities and is integrated into social networks. Search results can be shared on social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
Bing
Microsoft’s Bing is Google’s biggest competitor, but its market share is much smaller. Microsoft mainly integrates Bing into Windows 10 and its voice assistant Cortana. Bing is generally structured like Google, and has its advantages — especially when searching for videos and images. Here, it pays to use Bing with Google.
Startpage
Startpage uses Google as the algorithm, but anonymizes requests. The company is located in the Netherlands. Developers do not use targeted advertising. User data is therefore not evaluated. While the search engine is also funded by advertising, it is not personalized. Startpage and Ixquick are from the same company and are now one entity.
Wolfram Alpha
The Wolfram Alpha search engine is based on mathematics. Unlike traditional search engines, Wolfram Alpha uses a semantic approach. The result is a comprehensive answer to the question. For example, typing “earth” will not return search results for sites with that word, but information about the Earth, such as distance from the sun, circumference, weight, etc. In other words, Wolfram Alpha returns results for a specific user question, not a list of sites where a specific term appears.
Metager – Metasearch engine usage
With billions of websites, regular search engines like Google can’t do all internet searches. Many experts say that even Google searches at most 20% of the entire Internet. Maybe not even 5%. If you want to find as much information on a topic as possible from the Internet, metasearch engines can be of great help. These search engines do not use their own algorithms to search the internet, but pass the search terms to a certain number of other search engines.
Metasearch engines remove duplicate search results found and sort individual search engine results into their own rankings. The search results are arranged in the same way as a normal search engine. However, searches in metasearch engines sometimes take longer because the site has to wait for results from all search engines.
The most popular German metasearch engine – Metager – is run by the University of Hannover. It is not only the most popular German metasearch engine, but also the oldest and most established search engine. MetaGer developers are constantly improving the search engine. With MetaGer, you can search within research reports. You can also learn a lot about search engine development on the developer’s page. Internet users with a particular interest in science will find a lot of interesting information on MetaGer.
