Google and Bing get a lot of attention, which you’d expect given both hold approximately 95% of the global search market share.
However, users searching for “Google alternatives” has increased by 7% year-on-year (mainly driven by a big spike at the end of May), with the U.S. seeing a 4% increase, according to data from Glimpse.
While this isn’t substantial, the spike at the end of May correlates with the period immediately after Google I/O and the less-than-desirable AI Overview results.
It’s uncertain how much the end-of-May spike was due to SEO articles about Google alternatives.
If broader market trends mostly caused the spike, the recent DOJ lawsuit might change how we understand the market’s reaction to Google and its feature issues.
It also reminds us that Google and Microsoft Bing aren’t the only search engines out there; they aren’t the only search engines developing core search products or new products and features using AI and LLMs as a backbone.
For several years, I’ve been covering Yandex, Baidu and other search engines worldwide as they develop their search products with and without AI.
Baidu (China)
Baidu has faced new competition in recent years. While it remains the dominant search engine in China, it has lost market share to non-traditional “search engine” applications.
Baidu is looking to AI to revamp its content ecosystem, bringing new capabilities to existing platforms like Baidu App, Baidu Content Ecosystem, Baidu Tieba and Baidu Marketing.
At the forefront of Baidu’s search revolution is Wenxin Yiyan (a.k.a. ERNIE).
ERNIE (Enhanced Representation through kNowledge Integration) is an AI language model developed by Baidu that leverages knowledge graphs to enhance natural language understanding and generation.
While ERNIE is a part of Baidu’s broader AI strategy, including applications in search, autonomous driving and cloud computing, in May 2024, Baidu disclosed that around 11% of traditional core search results were generated using AI technology.
Another key product in Baidu’s portfolio is Wenku.
Wenku is being transformed into a smarter, more intuitive document creation tool, much like Copilot, making it easier for users to create and manage content.
Baidu is, however, feeling the pressure as other platforms improve and work to acquire user focus, develop their own search tools and use AI.
Recently, competition has heated up even more. On July 10, Alibaba’s search engine, Quark, launched its AI-driven “Super Search Box.”
Tencent’s Yuanbao rolled out a new deep search feature on July 1, and DingTalk’s AI search started its exclusive testing phase on June 26.
Dig deeper: International SEO: How to avoid common translation and localization pitfalls
Yandex (Russia)
Yandex has claimed to have used AI in search technologies for more than 2020 years. At the 2020 YAC (Yet Another Conference), Tigran Khudaverdyan unveiled YATI (Yet Another Transformer with Improvements).
YATI is a machine learning algorithm developed to enhance its search engine capabilities. It focuses on better understanding the semantic meaning of search queries and documents, similar to human comprehension.