List of search engines explained

Search engines, including web search engines, selection-based search engines, metasearch engines, desktop search tools, and web portals and vertical market websites have a search facility for online databases.

By content/topic

General

Name	Language	Backend ownership
Ask.com	Multilingual	Google
Baidu	Chinese	Baidu
	Multilingual	Brave
Dogpile	English	Metasearch engine
DuckDuckGo	Multilingual	Multiple, including Microsoft Bing
Ecosia	Multilingual	Google and Microsoft Bing
Elasticsearch	Multilingual	until 2021, then Elasticsearch
Exalead	Multilingual	Cloudview
Excite†	Multilingual	Microsoft Bing
Gigablast	English
Google	Multilingual	Google
HotBot	English	Microsoft Bing
Kagi	English	Metasearch engine and Kagi Inc
Lycos	Multilingual	Microsoft Bing
MetaCrawler	English	Metasearch engine
Microsoft Bing	Multilingual	Microsoft Bing
Mojeek	Multilingual	Mojeek
Opensearch	Multilingual
Petal	Multilingual	Huawei
Qwant	Multilingual	Microsoft Bing
Searx	Multilingual	Metasearch engine
Sogou	Multilingual	Tencent
Startpage	English	Google
Swisscows	Multilingual	Microsoft Bing
WebCrawler	English	Microsoft Bing
YaCy	Multilingual
Yahoo! Search†	Multilingual	Microsoft Bing
Yandex	Multilingual	Yandex
Youdao†	Chinese	NetEase
	English	Microsoft Bing

† Main website is a portal

Geographically localized

Name	Language	Country
		China, United States
		Japan
	Korean	Korea
	Korean	Korea
	Kurdish	Sweden^[1] ^[2] ^[3]
		Germany
		Japan
		Iceland
	Slovenian	Slovenia
		Korea
		Iran
Pipilika (defunct)		Bangladesh
		Russia
		India
		Switzerland
Sesam (defunct)		Norway, Sweden
		Czech Republic
		Israel
		Japan (Google backend)
		China
		Canada, United States

Accountancy

IFACnet

Business

Computers

Shodan (website)

Content

Openverse, search engine for open content.

Dark web

See main article: Dark web.

Education

General:

Chegg

Academic materials only:

Enterprise

Events

Tickex (US, UK)
TickX (UK, Ireland, Spain, Netherlands)

Food and recipes

RecipeBridge: vertical search engine for recipes
Yummly: semantic recipe search

Genealogy

Mocavo.com: family history search engine

Job

See main article: Job search engine.

Adzuna (UK)
CareerBuilder (US)
Craigslist (by city)
Dice.com (US)
Glassdoor (US)
Indeed (US)
JobStreet.com (Southeast Asia, Japan, India)
Monster.com (US), (India)
Naukri.com (India)
Rozee.pk (Pakistan)
Yahoo! HotJobs (Countrywise subdomains, International)

Legal

Medical

Bing Health
Bioinformatic Harvester
CiteAb (antibody search engine for medical researchers)
EB-eye EMBL-EBI's Search engine
Entrez (includes PubMed)
GenieKnows
Healia
Healthline
Nextbio (Life Science Search Engine)
PubGene
Searchmedica
WebMD

Mobile/handheld

Taganode Local Search Engine (now defunct)
Taptu: taptu mobile/social search (now defunct)

News

People

Real estate/property

By data type

Search engines dedicated to a specific kind of information

Maps

Multimedia

Price

Bing Shopping
Google Shopping (formerly Google Product Search and Froogle^[4])
Kelkoo
MySimon
PriceGrabber
PriceRunner
Pronto.com
Shopping.com
Shopzilla
TickX

Source code

BitTorrent

These search engines work across the BitTorrent protocol.

BTDigg
Isohunt - discontinued
Mininova - discontinued
The Pirate Bay
TorrentSpy - discontinued
Torrentz - discontinued

Blog

By model

Search appliances

See main article: Search appliance.

Desktop search engines

Desktop search engines listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.

Name	Platform	Remarks	License
HP Autonomy	Windows	IDOL Enterprise Desktop Search, HP Autonomy Universal Search.^[5]
	Beagle	Linux	Open-source desktop search tool for Linux based on Lucene. Unmaintained since 2009.
Copernic Desktop Search	Windows	Major desktop search program. The full trial version downgrades after the trial period automatically to the free version, which is (anno 2018) limited to indexing a maximum of 10.000 files.
DocFetcher	Cross-platform	Open-source desktop search tool for Windows and Linux, based on Apache Lucene
dtSearch Desktop	Windows
Everything	Windows	Find files and folders by name instantly on NTFS volumes
	GNOME Storage	Linux	Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux
	Google Desktop	Linux, Mac OS X, Windows	Integrates with the main Google search engine page. As of September 14, 2011, Google has discontinued this product.
ISYS Search Software	Windows	search software.
KRunner	Linux
	Locate32	Windows	Graphical port of Unix's locate & updatedb
	Lookeen	Windows	Desktop search product with Outlook plugin and limited support for other formats via IFilters, uses Lucene search engine.	^[6]
Nepomuk	Linux	Open-source semantic desktop search tool for Linux. Has been replaced by Baloo in KDE Applications from release 4.13 onward.	License SA 3.0 and the GNU Free Documentation License 1.2
Recoll	Linux, Unix, Windows, macOS	Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux
Spotlight	macOS	Found in Apple Mac OS X "Tiger" and later OS X releases.
	Strigi	Linux, Unix, Solaris, Mac OS X and Windows	Cross-platform open-source desktop search engine. Unmaintained since 2011-06-02.
Terrier Search Engine	Linux, Mac OS X, Unix	Desktop search for Windows, Mac OS X (Tiger), Unix/Linux.	^[7]
Tracker	Linux, Unix	Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux
	Tropes Zoom	Windows	Semantic Search Engine (no longer available)^[8]
Unity Dash	Linux	Part of Ubuntu Desktop	,^[9] LGPL v2.1^[10]
Windows Search	Windows	Part of Windows Vista and later OSs. Available as Windows Desktop Search for Windows XP and Server 2003. Does not support indexing UNC paths on x64 systems.
X1 Desktop Search	Windows	Major desktop search product along with Copernic Desktop Search	^[11]
Wumpus	Cross platform	Desktop search focused on information retrieval research	GPL

Child-safe search engines

Metasearch engines

See main article: Metasearch engine.

Name	Language
	English
	English
	English
	Multilingual

	English
	Multilingual
	Multilingual
	English

	Multilingual
	Multilingual
	Multilingual
All In One	English

Natural language

Ask.com
Bing (Semantic ability is powered by Powerset)
Lexxe
Perplexity.ai

Open-source search engines

Web search engine

Enterprise search

P2P search engines

Name	Language
Seeks (open-source)	English
YaCy (free and fully decentralized)	Multilingual

Privacy search engines

Social and environmental focus

Ecosia

Semantic browsing engines

Name	Description	Speciality
	Specialises in knowledge base and semantic search	answer engine
Swoogle	Searching over 10,000 ontologies	Semantic web documents
Yebol	defunct
	Semantic web search for food, cooking, and recipes	food related

Social search engines

Usenet

Google Groups (formerly Deja News)

Visual search engines

See main article: Visual search engine.

Defunct or acquired search engines

Name	Backend ownership	Demise
iWon	Ask.com	Shut down after AT&T merger
Teoma	Ask.com	Merged to Ask.com which still uses its algorithms
A9.com	Microsoft Bing	Redirect to Amazon homepage (parent company)
AOL	Google until 2015, then Microsoft Bing	Merged to Yahoo!
Alexa Internet	Microsoft Bing	Bought by Amazon in 1999, shut down in 2021
Ciao!	Microsoft Bing	Shut down in 2018
Ms. Dewey	Microsoft Bing	January 2009
Groovle	Google	Taken over by Google after Google sued for name similarity
MySpace Search	Google	Function taken over by Google in 2006
Mystery Seeker	Google	Novelty "search"; went offline in 2017
Netscape	Google	Now redirects to AOL
Ripple	Google	as of 2017 at the latest
Ecocho	Google, then Yahoo!
Forestle	Google, then Yahoo!	Redirected to Ecosia in 2011
Yippy		Redirected to DuckDuckGo in 2021
Grams	Grams (anonymous owner)	Closed in 2017

AlltheWeb (acquired by Yahoo!)
AltaVista (acquired by Yahoo! in 2003, shut down in 2013)
Bixee.com (India) (acquired by Ibibo)
Blekko (acquired by IBM in 2015 for its use for Watson-based products)^[13]
BlogScope (acquired by Marketwire)
BRS/Search (now OpenText Livelink ECM Discovery Server)
Btjunkie
Cuil (patents acquired by Google after shutdown)
DeepPeep
Direct Hit Technologies (acquired by Ask Jeeves in January, 2000)
Getit Infoservices Private Limited
Google Answers
GoPubMed
hakia
IBM STAIRS
Infoseek (acquired by Disney)
Inktomi
Ixquick (merged into Startpage)
Jubii
Kartoo
LeapFish
Lotus Magellan
MetaLib
mozDex
Munax
Myriad Search
Overture.com (formerly GoTo.com, now Yahoo! Search Marketing)
PubSub
RetrievalWare (acquired by Fast Search & Transfer and now owned by Microsoft)
Scroogle (Google Scraper)
Singingfish (acquired by AOL)
Soso
Speechbot
Sphere (acquired by AOL)
Startpage (acquired by System1, an advertising company)
Tafiti (replaced by Microsoft Bing)
Volunia^[14]
Wikia Search (defunct)
WiseNut
World Wide Web Worm

Notes and References

Web site: Kurdish Swede creates first Kurdish search engine . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20140102193541/http://www.basnews.com/en/News/Details/Kurdish-Swede-creates-first-Kurdish-search-engine/9007 . 2014-01-02 . 1 January 2014 . Bas News.
Web site: 30 December 2013 . First Kurdish Search Engine, Egerin, Is Launched . 1 January 2014 . SBWire.
Web site: 18 March 2016 . This Entrepreneur Wants to Build a Kurdish Alternative to Google . www.vice.com . en.
News: Sullivan . Danny . Goodbye Froogle, Hello Google Product Search! . 3 June 2018 . Search Engine Land . April 18, 2007.
Web site: HP Universal Search . 2014-07-01 . 2015-05-16 . https://web.archive.org/web/20150516141232/http://www.autonomy.com/products/universal-search . dead .
Web site: Lookeen 10 . Lookeen . 2016-02-03.
Web site: Terrier License . GitHub. 13 November 2021 .
Web site: Retrieved 15 August 2015. . 16 August 2015 . 6 August 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190806185027/http://www.semantic-knowledge.com/download.htm . dead .
Web site: Unity on GitHub . GitHub. 19 November 2021 .
Web site: Required License Files . GitHub. 19 November 2021 .
Web site: X1 Search 8 . X1 Technologies . 12 July 2014.
News: Darrow . Barb . Alibaba Is Adding This Key Technology to Its Growing Cloud . August 21, 2018 . . October 13, 2017.
Web site: Data, Data, Everywhere Data. Now a Better Way to Understand It . 27 March 2015 .
Web site: Il dominio Volunia.it è in vendita. MRW.it News. 11 April 2014 .