Why Google is not the Only Search Engine a Website Owner needs to be Aware of

More than 90 percent of all online searches are conducted through either Google, Bing, or Yahoo. As someone working in website marketing and search engine optimization, it’s easy to get caught up in satisfying the three big names in internet searching. These are big companies, yes, who dominate the marketplace however these are far from the only search engines out there.

Why you might want to do some research into alternative search engines is because there are a handful of companies gaining notice that may provide hefty benefit if you know how to work them. There are literally dozens of search engines out there, each with their own growing fan base and niche. Here’s our list of some alternative search engines to keep an eye out for.

Blekko

Blekko.com is among the newer alternative search engines to elbow its way into the marketplace. They boast approximately 20 million monthly searches and have a unique slashtag feature that might interest some. Through the use of slashtags, you can limit search results to specific units, such as searching for /news or if you’re searching for a /date. Blekko has also adopted strict quality control standards and any site that does not meet its minimums is not included in its engine. This equates to searchers getting the most relevant and high-quality results to their queries.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo.com boasts more than 5 million monthly searches, providing results based on its own search algorithms while supplementing these with integrated results from Bing and other larger search engines.

Ixquick

Ixquick.com, like DuckDuckGo, has approximately 200,000 unique users every month. This alternative search engine bases its results on a combination of meta data and how it certain web pages are ranked based on a 0-5 rating system.

Via the Ixquick rating system, a website gains ratings based off of how many times it is included in top search rankings. The privacy standards are also maintained to the highest degree and Ixquick actually proclaims itself to be the most private search engine on the internet.

Yebol

Yebol is the smallest alternative search engine on this list but it does something none of the others do. Yebol will actually categorize sites according to niche and in search results, provide groups of results under which a user can expand. Thereby, searching may reveal a group for news related content, video content, image content, and more.

Gigablast

The last search engine on our list is Gigablast which categorizes entries primarily using the dmoz directory to do so. Widely marketed as being the most environmentally friendly energy, Gigablast uses 90 percent wind energy consumption in its operations. Today, it’s grown to some 30,000 unique users per month.

What a pain it can be to have to appeal to all these different search engines as a website owner!

Fortunately, at the end of the day, all you have to do is to build the highest quality content possible and ensure that it is being properly indexed via Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The alternative search engines here should not have difficulty finding your site if it is properly indexed on the big three.

As we head into the future, it’s a very real possibility that more alternative search engines may rise up to challenge the status quo. Be sure to search on the platform that most appeals to you!