Internet Search (Global Market)

Internet search engines

• Yandex.Search
• Search for Mail.ru
• Google Search
• Panguso.com (Chinese Internet search engine)
• Baidu

Smart search

As of January 2025:

1. ChatGPT Search OpenAI ( )

2. Perplexity AI

3. Genspark AI (one of Perplexity's most powerful and effective counterparts)

4. DeepSeek (built-in search)

5. Mistral AI (built-in search)

6. Google Gemini (built-in search)

7. Felo AI

8. You com AI

9. Komo AI

10. Phind AI (mainly for searching for technical information)

11. Yandex Neuro search through Yandex services (priority format for searching in the Russian-speaking segment)

12. Hix AI

13. Bing AI using Copilot.

Internet search in Russia

• Internet search in Russia

2024

Yandex ranked fourth most popular among search engines in the world

Google's share of the global search engines market for personal computers is declining, while Microsoft and Yandex are strengthening their positions. This is stated in the study by Statista, the results of which were published at the end of January 2025.

It is noted that since the advent of Google Search in 1997, the company has dominated the global search engines market. The bulk of Google's revenue is generated through advertising. Its parent structure Alphabet is one of the largest Internet corporations in the world, whose capitalization in 2024 exceeded $2 trillion. Previously, only four companies crossed this threshold - Apple, Microsoft, Saudi Aramco and Nvidia. However, analysts record a downward trend in Google's share in the global search market: if in January 2024 it was 81.95%, then by January 2025 it had decreased to 78.83%.

Competing systems benefit from Google's weakening position. In particular, the share of the search engine Microsoft Bing, which is in second place in the ranking, during the specified period rose from 10.51% to 12.23%. Closing the top three is Yahoo!, which strengthened its position from 2.67% to 3.07%. On the fourth line in the Statista rating is the Russian search engine Yandex, which took 2.94% of the global market against 2.42% in January 2024. The fifth place went to DuckDuckGo, whose share rose from 0.69% to 0.87% year-on-year.

Similar statistics are provided by StatCounter. This company estimates that Google controlled 79.32% of the global PC search market in January 2025. In second place is Microsoft Bing with 11.96%. In the StatCounter rating, Yandex is on the third line, occupying 3.09% of the global industry. Next come Yahoo! and DuckDuckGo with a score of 2.91% and 0.85%, respectively. The total share of all other search engines is estimated at 1.86%.

Analysts emphasize that regional indicators may differ significantly from global ones. For example, in Russia, Yandex is the undisputed leader, holding about three quarters of the segment. As of January 2025, Yandex's share, according to StatCounter estimates, was 75.51%. Another 22.95% was controlled by Google, approximately 1.13% went to the Microsoft Bing search engine. Thus, the total share of these three services was at 99.59%.

In many other countries, Internet users tend to also use Google, Yahoo! and Bing. In China, Microsoft is the most popular search engine from 51.04% as of January 2025 (according to StatCounter estimates). In India, almost 92% of the market is controlled by Google.

Overall, Google remains the dominant player in the global personal computer search engines market. The company's share at the beginning of 2025 is almost four times higher than the total result of all other players. According to StatCounter estimates, in May 2012, Google exceeded 92%.

One of the main trends in the global search market is the integration of artificial intelligence. Neural networks trained on a large amount of data serve to improve search results and understand user queries. AI helps determine the relevance of web pages, personalize advertisements and content. Artificial intelligence not only improves the quality of results, but also changes the search process itself, making it more intuitive. These changes affect both users and search engine optimizers, content creators and marketers.^[1]

Google's share of the global search engines market falls below 90% for the first time in 10 years

At the end of 2024, Google's share of the global search engines market fell below 90% - this was the first time in ten years. Against this background, competing services are strengthening their positions. Statistics on the market in mid-January 2025 were released by Statcounter.

It is noted that for the first time since the beginning of 2015, Google took less than 90% of the global search market, taking into account all platforms. In particular, in October 2024, the figure was 89.34%, in November - 89.99%, in December - 89.73%. The peak values ​ ​ of the popularity of the Google search engine, according to Statcounter, were observed in the spring of 2023: then the share fluctuated around 93%. Last time, indicators less than 90% were observed in January, February and March 2015 - 89.62%, 89.47% and 89.52%, respectively.

Google's closest competitor is a search engine. In Microsoft Bing October 2024, the share of this system was estimated at 4.16%. A month later, the figure fell to 3.92%, and in December 2024 it was recorded at 3.98%.

Closes the top three most popular search engines on a global scale Yandex. In October 2024, he was preferred by 2.78% of Internet users. In November and December, this value was 2.42% and 2.55%, respectively.

In fourth place in the Statcounter rating is the search engine Yahoo!, whose performance in October, November and December 2024 was estimated at 1.33%, 1.24% and 1.29%. On the fifth line is Baidu with 0.82%, 0.81% and 0.81% respectively. The total share of all other search engines combined from year to year is less than 2%.

Thus, as noted, Google's lost search traffic is gradually redistributed between Bing, Yandex and Yahoo!. In Russia, the share of Google search is also decreasing. As of December 2024, it is 24.41% against 27.28% in January of the same year.^[2]

Growth of Yandex's share in the global search engines market to 3.1% by traffic volume

As of the end of 2024, Yandex's share in the global search engines market reached 3.1% in terms of traffic. According to this indicator, the Russian service was in second place, beating the Chinese Baidu system with a result of 2.7%. Such data were released on December 9, 2024 by the American company Cloudflare, which provides CDN (content delivery network) services.

If we consider traffic on all platforms, including personal computers running Windows and macOS, as well as mobile gadgets based on Android and iOS, then Google is the undisputed leader: this company in 2024 accounted for 88.5% of search engines traffic in the world. The list of leading industry players along with Yandex and Baidu also included Bing with a result of 2.6% and DuckDuckGo with 0.9%. The total share of all other search engines was 2.2%.

If we consider only devices with Windows operating systems, then Google's share is at 80.1%. In second place in this rating is Bing with 10.4%. Yandex closes the top three, showing a result of 3.9%. The top five also includes Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, which hold 1.9% and 1% of this segment, respectively. All other search engines combined control 2.7% of search traffic on Windows devices.

In Russia, according to Cloudflare estimates, Yandex is in the lead with 65.7%. In second place is Google with a score of 33.4%, and Bing closes the top three with a score of 0.4%.

The study also says that global Internet traffic continues to grow rapidly: at the end of 2024, the increase was recorded at 17.2%. Google has retained the status of the most popular Internet service in general. OpenAI remained the leader in the Generative AI category. ^[3]

2012: Yandex has the fourth place in the world in terms of the number of search queries

The Russian search engine Yandex ranked fourth in the world in terms of the number of processed requests, overtaking the search service of Microsoft and second only to search engines Google, Baidu and Yahoo, reports GigaOm, citing data from the analytical company ComScore.

According to statistics, the Russian search engine overtook its competitor from Microsoft (Bing service, search on the microsoft.com website and others) in November, and in December strengthened its leadership. According to ComScore, in December the number of requests in Yandex amounted to 4.84 billion (2.8% of the world market), and Microsoft - 4.48 billion (2.5% of the world market).

At the same time, as GigaOm notes, Yandex is still inferior to search services from Microsoft in terms of the number of users - 74.4 million against 268.6 million people.

Google remains the world's largest search engine - in December, its users left 114.73 billion requests (65.2%). In second place is the Chinese search engine Baidu - 14.4 billion requests (8.2%), and in third Yahoo with 8.63 billion requests in December (4.9%).

As for Russia, in our country Yandex is the leading search engine, occupying, according to the Liveinternet service, about 60% of the market. In second place is Google with a share of about 26%.

2011: Google, Microsoft and Yahoo join forces in search

In May 2011, the largest search engines in the world - Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo - decided to support a single set of schemes (tags of the HTML page markup language). If website developers use it, it will become much easier for search engines to extract structured information from materials and, thus, search the Internet will become more efficient. The schemes are published on the website Schema.org. There are now over 100 different markup tags in the site directory. Tags are provided for many categories of structured data describing events, organizations, places, people, products, reviews, ratings, books and films, and so on.

The first popular project to supply web pages with structured markup was launched at one time by Yahoo, and it was called SearchMonkey, an IDC analyst comments. In 2010, however, Yahoo ended its support. One can only welcome the emergence of a similar new project with the participation of Google and Microsoft, the analyst notes. The use of Schema.org markup methods will allow search engines to present search results in an enriched form, namely, competition is now unfolding in this area.

2009

In 2009, Hitwise released April statistics on the popularity of various search engines among American Internet users. According to the data presented, Google continues to hold the leading position in the list of the largest search engines. This company's market share increased from 67.9% in April 2008 to 72.7% last month.

Google's main competitors in search - Altaba (formerly Yahoo) and Microsoft - have lost ground somewhat. So, if a year ago Altaba (formerly Yahoo) controlled 20.3% of the market, then in April 2009 its share was 16.3%.

Well, Microsoft search services processed 5.7% of requests against 6.3% a year earlier.

The market share of the Ask.com search engine for the year decreased from 4.2 to 4.0%.

The total share of 49 other search engines whose operation in the United States is monitored by Hitwise was 1.36% in April. Hitwise notes that requests of eight or more words grew by 18% over the year. The number of queries containing six and seven words increased by 5 and 8%, respectively. But most often, search engines deal with two words, which account for almost 23% of the total mass of queries.

Global Search Market, July 2009 - July 2008 (ComScore)

2007: Google's 77% share

In December 2007, according to Net Applications, Google's global share of the web search market was 77.04%, Yahoo 12.46%, MSN 3.33%, Microsoft Live Search 2.57%, AOL 2.12%, Ask 1.38%, AltaVista 0.13%, Excite 0.07%, Lycos 0.02%, All the Web 0.02%.

History

Interesting facts

• The first product of 1Sboris Nuraliev was a search engine of the same name. This name was invented since no more than 1C (second) was required to obtain the required information.

Notes