People search for information in more ways than ever—from traditional search engines to YouTube videos and AI chatbots.
Understanding the vast landscape helps you see which tools your potential customers are using and why. For each search engine on this list, we’ve included monthly traffic (as estimated by Semrush’s Traffic Overview tool based on April 2025 data) to help you understand how popular every option is.
Traditional Search Engines
1. Google
Global monthly visits: 92.7 billion
Best for: A comprehensive and personalized search experience
Google remains the most popular search engine to date. Likely due to its large index of websites and the ability to provide relevant search results quickly.
One of its strongest points lies in being able to anticipate users’ intent—its auto-complete feature can often decipher what you’re looking for before you finish typing.
It offers useful features like featured snippets and AI-generated summaries that help users get the information they need as quickly as possible. And the introduction of AI Mode is making it more interactive than ever.
Increased advertising and tracking in recent years have raised privacy concerns. But if you’re shopping online or looking for directions, Google will usually give you what you need in seconds.
2. Bing
Global monthly visits: 4.2 billion
Best for: Image-based searches
Microsoft’s Bing offers strong visual search capabilities that make it easy to find images, preview videos, and browse products.
It also includes seamless integrations with other Microsoft products, such as Windows and Edge. And unique features like points that can be redeemed for rewards like gift cards.
It’s worth noting that Bing’s search results typically contain fewer ads than Google results.
They also feel more curated since Bing tends to prioritize informational sources (such as Wikipedia or official government sites) over more commercial websites.
3. Yahoo
Global monthly visits: 2.5 billion
Best for: Casual search built into a broader homepage experience
Yahoo’s original search engine functioned as a manually curated directory of websites that users could search through to find what they needed but now uses Bing’s index and algorithm to generate search results.
The whole experience is bundled into the Yahoo homepage, which features news, weather forecasts, an email service, and more.
It offers reliable and relevant search results for most queries.
But the platform isn’t focused on providing an advanced search experience. Currently, there aren’t AI-powered answers or advanced filters that would help with finding highly specific information.
AI Search Engines (Also Called Answer Engines)
4. ChatGPT Search
Global monthly visits: 4.5 billion
Best for: AI-generated answers backed up with citations and sources
ChatGPT search offers conversational answers, summarized information, and source links rather than a list of search results.
You can ask follow-up questions, which allows you to refine even incredibly specific search queries.
While it’s great for synthesizing information and learning about complex topics, it’s not necessarily designed to discover fresh content like news articles.
5. Perplexity
Global monthly visits: 125.4 million
Best for: Scientific research and fact-checking
Perplexity provides AI-generated answers backed by credible sources by default. And provides inline citations, with each sentence being linked to a source.
It’s great for getting insights on technical and factual questions.
Perplexity’s Pro Search feature lets you ask multi-turn questions and get progressively more refined answers. It offers a minimalistic interface, with few to no ads or unnecessary clutter.
While Perplexity doesn’t retain conversational history in the same way ChatGPT does, it still does a great job of surfacing credible information on a wide range of topics.
Social Media Search Engines
6. YouTube
Global monthly visits: 42.8 billion
Best for: How-to content, reviews, and video-based learning
While YouTube isn’t a traditional search engine, it’s a popular choice for people looking for tutorials, product reviews, entertainment, and other types of video-based content.
The platform does a great job of surfacing relevant and engaging videos based on your preferences and any search queries you enter.
Engagement metrics impact YouTube’s search results, which means popular videos are often prioritized over other (and potentially more relevant) content.
There are also plenty of ads and sponsored videos on the platform, especially for commercial topics.
7. TikTok
Global monthly visits: 1.9 billion
Best for: Bite-sized video content and crowd-sourced recommendations
TikTok offers users a way to search for short-form videos on trending topics, product reviews, local recommendations, and more.
It ranks content based on a few factors, including how well a video matches your search query, your activity on the platform (e.g., videos watched, liked, shared, or commented on), and things like location and language.
It’s helpful for exploratory searches, such as “things to do in [city]” or “best books for [topic].”
Since most of the content on TikTok is designed for entertainment purposes and quick engagement, it can be harder to find in-depth information on a topic.
Privacy-Focused Search Engines
8. DuckDuckGo
Global monthly visits: 1.9 billion
Best for: A search experience with no tracking of any kind
DuckDuckGo is a popular privacy-focused search engine that doesn’t store search history, track users, or offer any kind of personalized results based on user behavior.
Its results are gathered with its own web crawler as well as from platforms like Bing.
While DuckDuckGo doesn’t personalize search results, it still offers convenient features like instant answers, shortcuts, and maps. These make it easier for users to find information without violating their privacy.
This search engine is a great choice for people looking for a private search experience without having to use VPNs, proxies, or similar technologies.
9. Ecosia
Global monthly visits: 254 million
Best for: A feel-good search experience that supports environmental causes
Ecosia is an eco-friendly search engine that uses the profits from its search ads to plant trees.
So far, the platform has helped plant more than 230 million trees around the world.
It gets search results and ads from Bing and Google. The source used for your results depends on things like your location and your cookie settings.
While not as privacy-focused as DuckDuckGo, Ecosia still anonymizes user data. It’s a good choice for those who want their daily searches to contribute to a good cause.
10. Startpage
Global monthly visits: 49.4 million
Best for: Getting Google’s search results without being tracked by Google
Startpage serves Google’s search results but strips away identifiable information (IP addresses, user behavior, and search queries) to provide a private search experience.
There’s also an option to open results using a proxy server for increased anonymity.
The lack of personalized search results helps reduce algorithmic bias, making Startpage a good choice for objective research.
11. Brave Search
Global monthly visits: 367.2 million
Best for: A mostly ad-free search experience
Brave Search offers a private and mostly ad-free search experience.
It doesn’t rely on Google or Bing—it uses its own web crawler and search index. This allows Brave to provide search results that aren’t influenced by mainstream tech algorithms to give users an alternative view of the web.
The search engine lets you use “Goggles”—custom filters users can apply to tailor results to their needs (e.g., to only show results from independent news sources).
Region-Specific Search Engines
12. Baidu
Global monthly visits: 728.2 million
Best for: Chinese-speaking users interested in locally optimized search results
Baidu is the main search engine in China. Due to the country’s strict internet regulations, most Western search engines remain inaccessible and make Baidu the main way to access the web in China.
Baidu offers an ad-heavy search experience with many sponsored results. There’s also a big emphasis on in-house services and platforms, such as Baike (the Chinese alternative to Wikipedia) and Tieba (a popular online forum).
It’s an indispensable search engine for local Chinese searches. That said, international users might find the search engine limiting due to censorship and language barriers.
13. Shenma
Global monthly visits (to the website—not the mobile app): 519,800
Best for: Chinese users looking for a mobile-first search experience
Shenma is a mobile-first search engine aimed at the Chinese market.
The search results are highly commercial and aimed at users who are looking to make a purchase. This shouldn’t be surprising, since Shenma is partially owned by Alibaba, the biggest ecommerce company in China.
Shenma is a great option for Chinese users looking to discover products, apps, and entertainment content.
14. Yandex
Global monthly visits: 238.3 million
Best for: Russian users looking for local search results
Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russia.
It offers real-time search suggestions, quick answers, and voice search. Yandex also includes other services, including email and maps.
15. Naver
Global monthly visits: 1.1 billion
Best for: Korean-speaking users looking for a news portal combined with local search results
Naver is a South Korean search engine that offers search results combined with content from related services, such as Naver Blog (user-generated blogs) and Knowledge iN (a Q&A forum).
It prioritizes internally hosted content (such as Naver and Knowledge iN pages) to keep users on the platform.
This creates a unique experience that’s great for exploring Korean culture and trends.
16. Seznam
Global monthly visits: 246.1 million
Best for: Czech users looking for local news and search results
Seznam is the search engine of choice for users in the Czech Republic. And has its own web crawler and index.
It’s built for use with the Czech language specifically, which helps it get a better understanding of queries that contain Czech idioms and cultural context.
While it might not have advanced features (e.g., AI-powered overviews) like the more popular global search engines, it’s a good option for Czech users looking for local news and answers to local search queries.
Especially since it integrates with other popular Czech platforms—for mapping, real estate, and news.
Paid Search Engines
17. Kagi
Global monthly visits (website visits—not search engine users): 2.4 million
Best for: A highly customizable, ad-free search experience
Kagi is an ad-free search engine supported by paid user subscriptions.
Its search results are derived from a combination of multiple indexes, including its own indexes (such as Teclis), and the indexes of Google, Bing, and other platforms.
Kagi’s search results also rely on API calls to platforms like WolframAlpha, Wikipedia, and others.
Kagi lets you decide which websites you’d like to see in your search results through the “Lenses” feature. Which lets you narrow down your search to find what you’re looking for more easily.
For example, Kagi has a pre-built programming lens that only displays results from programming language websites and forums.
Being a freemium search engine (with paid plans starting at $5/month), Kagi is aimed at power users (such as researchers and writers) who perform extensive research and are looking to eliminate noise and clickbait.
Specialized Search Engines
18. The Wayback Machine
Global monthly visits: 23 million
Best for: Looking up historical versions of webpages
The Wayback Machine gives users a way to look up websites at specific points in history. This can be useful for tracking site changes or recovering lost content.
Its interface is fairly basic. You just type in a URL and are then presented with a calendar of available snapshots of that website across different points in time.
From here, you can click on a date to be redirected to an archived version of that website.
While the Wayback Machine doesn’t have every website that ever existed in its archive, it has a large database of websites you can look up.
19. ResearchGate
Global monthly visits: 92.9 million
Best for: Peer-reviewed scientific and academic research
ResearchGate is a search engine and social network for researchers. Scientists use the platform to share their work, ask questions, and upload publications.
ResearchGate allows users to search for papers by author, topic, journal, or institution. And a lot of the papers are available for download directly from the platform.
It’s great for discovering recent studies and staying up to date on a specific field of research.
20. WolframAlpha
Global monthly visits: 5.4 million
Best for: Data analysis, math-based problem solving, and factual answers
WolframAlpha isn’t technically a search engine. (It calls itself a “computational knowledge engine.”) But it can function as one for fact-based queries.
Instead of retrieving search results like a traditional search engine, it calculates answers to your questions using algorithms and a massive database.
You can use it to solve math problems, compare statistics, and perform analyses.
While it’s not particularly useful for open-ended queries, it does extremely well when it comes to questions that involve data or computation.
It’s a great choice for analysts, engineers, scientists, and students.
Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
Google is still the most popular search engine in the world. But AI search platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity are gaining traction.
That means businesses looking to improve visibility should ensure that their websites are optimized for AI platforms as well.
This is where the Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit can help. It analyzes your performance across AI platforms and provides insights to help you improve your results.
