Search Engine.

A search engine is a software system that discovers, indexes, and ranks web content, returning a list of relevant results in response to user queries. The core functions of a search engine are crawling (discovering web content), indexing (storing and organising content in a retrieval database), and ranking (ordering results by relevance and quality for each query).

Major Search Engines

Google dominates global search with approximately 90% market share. Bing (Microsoft) holds 3-6% globally but has higher share on Windows devices and in the US. Yandex is the dominant search engine in Russia. Baidu dominates China (where Google is blocked). DuckDuckGo is the leading privacy-focused search engine, powered partly by Bing's index. Yahoo Search is powered by Bing. Naver is South Korea's dominant search engine.

AI-Powered Search Engines

Perplexity AI and Bing Copilot represent a new generation of AI-native search engines that generate answers rather than returning link lists. Google AI Overviews, Amazon Rufus (for product search), and LinkedIn Search (for professional content) all incorporate AI generation into traditionally link-based results. This evolution is creating an expanded search ecosystem beyond Google's traditional dominance.

Search Engine for SEO Strategy

Most SEO strategy targets Google because of its dominant market share. However, ignoring Bing means missing 3-6% of search traffic and an increasingly AI-visible channel (Copilot). Amazon SEO is a distinct discipline for product discovery. App store search (Apple App Store, Google Play) requires its own ASO (App Store Optimisation) strategy. A complete search visibility strategy accounts for all relevant discovery channels for the target audience.