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8 Search Engines and Web Crawlers

Most of us use search engines on a daily basis, but few can really answer what a search engine is? By definition, a search engine is a program for researching documents that are located on a network of computers or a computer. The most well-known form is a search engine for the World Wide Web, but there are also in-house search engines that access a company’s intranet. In this article we will discuss about 8 Search Engines and Web Crawlers.

After a user, i.e. a user of the Internet, has entered a search term in the search bar, the search engines return a list of different search results. However, these are not displayed randomly. Search engines always show users the content that appears relevant. Search engines perform the following tasks:

Find and sort results
Create and maintain an index
They prepare results in such a way that they are user-friendly

Web Crawler

A search query in a search engine doesn’t go through the entire Internet, but rather the search is limited to the World Wide Web. While users simply enter a term in the search field and the finished results are presented, many processes are running in the background, which are not even that simple.

Crawlers are also known as bots or spiders. As mentioned earlier, they are the ones scouring the web for content. In addition, they analyze their connections and follow links on pages that are already indexed. This is also referred to as “harvesting”. Crawlers primarily target HTML pages, but they can also collect .ppt or .pdf files. A crawler also analyzes the meta tags of a website. That’s why the meta snippet on websites is so important to be found easily on the Internet.

If an internet presence has been crawled, the recorded data is stored on a server. These indexed websites are visited by a crawler at regular intervals so that any changes can be registered and recorded. So all of this is happening in the background. End users don’t even notice it. A large number of search results are presented in a matter of seconds.

Below are some of the most widely used search engines available in the internet.

DuckDuckGo

The search engine, which went online in 2008 under the DuckDuckGo brand name, is a mixture of web crawler and meta search engine. The global share may be just 0.54 percent, but DuckDuckGo enjoys the benefits of the uncovered surveillance orgies in western countries. The special feature of DuckDuckGo is that no personal data is stored. The focus is on the search result as such, which is also reflected, among other things, in the absence of disruptive advertising or a clearer structure of the SERPs.

Google

Google has a global market share of over 90 percent. The search engine is available in 173 languages, including artificial languages. The search engine based on C, C++ and Python offers a complete toolbox with different tools, including Google Trends and Google AdSense. It handles more than 3.5 billion searches per day. This sear engine is highly used globally among 8 Search Engines and Web Crawlers.

The basic structure of the search engine, which was once exclusive to Google, still corresponds to today’s design. However, there were certain changes, for example in the presentation of the SERPs, the integration of geo-data and so on.

Ask

The search engine, founded in the USA in 1996, offers its own search index, with a particular focus on classic “question-answer scenarios”. The algorithm is designed in such a way that questions are answered in complete sentences. A few years ago, the search engine Ask had a market share of 1.4 percent (2016) in the USA, but this is shrinking more and more.

Ask was successively adapted to the Google index, which of course eliminated a USP (Unique Selling Proposition), which was often used as an argument with this alternative search engine. After Google increasingly covered question-answer searches, the end of Ask was practically sealed. Ads are displayed relatively prominently here in relation to the classic SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), and users are also given a selection of related search terms.

Bing

Bing, the world’s second most important search engine from Microsoft. It has come to existence since 2009. The search service, which is set up as a search index and web crawler, claims 3% percent of the global search market. The company behind Bing does not see the search engine as an original search service, but as a so-called “decision engine”.

The claim behind it is clear: Bing should relieve users of difficult decisions or support decision-making. With the “Bing & decide” function, there is a Google-like function or a counterpart to “I’m feeling lucky!”. This is one of the highly used search engine out of 8 Search Engines and Web Crawlers.
Please note: Bing offers a good alternative to Google, especially when it comes to searching for videos and images.

Yandex

When we speak of a “language index”, we are inevitably talking about the Russian-Dutch search engine Yandex. Because the term corresponds to the Russian transliteration and clearly shows what it is about. Yandex ranks number 5 in the global search engine market, after Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Baidu. The search engine is also the market leader in Russia, closely followed by Google – the two share practically 97 percent of the Russian search market between themselves.

It is noteworthy that Yandex, as a Google alternative, has explicitly included backlinks in the ranking evaluation since 2015. Similar to the US competition, Yandex offers a variety of services, including music streaming, news, games and maps. Anyone who wants to use this search engine will find a counterpart to the popular Google Analytics.

Mojeek

Mojeek is a search engine developed in Great Britain that acts as a classic web crawler. The company is committed to not allowing any tracking and also attaches great importance to user-friendly privacy settings. In 2018, Mojeek has two billion URLs in its program, and the “Search Engine Map” was also launched the year after.

Qwant

Qwant is designed in such a way that there is no conflict between privacy and good search results. The European search engine is committed to neutrality, offers a panoramic search and promises unbiased search results. Search queries are not saved, and you won’t find any advertisements here either. The Qwant search engine can be used in a total of 26 languages and received over 2.6 billion search queries in 2016 alone.

Baidu

Launched in 2000, the search engine Baidu is the undisputed top dog in China. Founded in Beijing, the search engine is listed on the stock exchange, exists exclusively in Mandarin and is one of the five most used search engines on the Internet globally. With Baidu Baike, in addition to the classic search index, there is also a wiki platform similar to the encyclopedia.

Given the size of the population in China, Baidu’s global share is relatively high, and in China itself the market share is more than 70 percent. Google, on the other hand, can only claim 2 percent in China, of course due to the language component and the fact that censorship is also an issue for Baidu as a Chinese search engine. Baidu is considered the Google of China and offers a comprehensive range of tools such as Baidu Maps, Baidu News or Baidu Tieba.

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8 Search Engines and Web Crawlers

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