Google launched the first iteration of its search engine on September 4, 1998. Since then, the tech giant has enjoyed a nearly unbroken string of growth and dominance in the search engine market.
But Google’s had some hiccups lately. Recent updates and new features haven’t landed well, and complaints from users and marketers hoping to attract them are getting louder and more frequent.
Now, a new school of competitive sharks circles the search engine whale, hoping to feast off its follies. Some are search engines with innovative features that address what people don’t like about Google. Others are apps not built for search, but searchers use them to look for things they would have otherwise found through Google.
These unexpected Google competitors offer new opportunities for users and marketers. We’ve pro/con-ed several search alternatives here. Skim through them to see which ones provide what you’re not getting from Google.
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Why Google is losing marketing share
In June of 2024, Google’s worldwide share of search dipped to a sliver over 91%—its lowest point in nearly a decade.
Few companies would cry over that type of market domination. But zoom out a bit, and you’ll see some trends that make the loss feel a little more significant.
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AI Overviews underwhelm
Google expanded the rollout of its AI Overviews on March 14. Users quickly shared screenshots of some funny and potentially dangerous answers from Google’s new search bot.
Google responded and rolled back the use of AI Overviews, but some users had already lost trust.
Marketers also criticized Google’s prioritization of its automatically generated responses. For one thing, the AI text takes up the most valuable space on the search page, forcing users to scroll to see other links.
Potential loss of search traffic is a significant pain, but the lemon juice on the cut for some marketers is when Google’s AI swipes their content to create its responses. Losing traffic to your own content is a tough pill to take.
Marketers got traffic jammed
Two recent Google algorithm core updates threw search results and traffic into chaos. Sites that spent years creating unique, original, research-based content saw their traffic plummet, some by 90%.
It’s not just small, independent websites losing out. Big publishers, even institutional news outlets, watched as Google throttled their traffic to a fraction of what it was just weeks before.
The instability moved marketers to look elsewhere for non-paid traffic.
GA4 is universally panned
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) officially launched in October 2020, but Google didn’t cut off access to its predecessor—Universal Analytics—until this July. Many marketers waited until the last minute to make the switch, which is understandable given the public feedback about GA4.
Data lags, data discrepancies, and buggy, hard-to-run reports fueled marketers’ disdain for the new analytics platform.
Small biz feels left out of big Ads updates
Every year, Google announces new Google Ads features at its Google Marketing Live (GML) event. It’s a pretty big deal because ads are, by far, Google’s largest source of revenue.
Even so, many marketers noted a glaring omission from 2024’s GML announcements—namely, any new features designed to help small businesses.
Big spenders already get an advantage when bidding on keywords in Google Ads. Features that only help big businesses grow bigger further the divide.
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8 surprising platforms that compete with Google
The fight for search traffic isn’t a straight-up battle between traditional search engines. Searchers, especially younger users, are turning to other platforms like social media apps and AI chatbots to find what they need online.
TikTok
A growing number of searchers, especially Gen Zers, say they’re turning to TikTok to find their next accountant or pair of strappy sandals. Even more telling is that 38% of people also use the short-form video-sharing app to search for information.
The shift is so noticeable that Google executives have acknowledged TikTok as a viable threat to its core search business.
Pros
TikTok offers users a more authentic way to learn about brands and products. Influencers and experts don’t just promote things to buy; they share how to use them, where to find them, and when to buy for the best deals.
Plus, the For You Page is constantly updated by the TikTok algorithm, so you get exposure to relevant ideas and information you wouldn’t have thought to search for (something Google can’t do).
For marketers, TikTok offers a surprisingly diverse audience, versatile ad formats, and highly engaged consumers.
Cons
You won’t find content that is not native to the TikTok app by searching on TikTok. That’s the biggest constraint of using it as a search engine. This is why it won’t ever fully replace Google—even if it does siphon some searchers from traditional search platforms.
Marketers need to be aware of the time investment it takes to be successful on TikTok. You have to post regularly. And since it’s a video-only platform, you can’t get away with a quickly written quip or link to your blog post.
Facebook and Instagram
Unlike TikTok, Facebook is more focused on helping you stay in contact with people you know. So while you can learn new information and discover brands organically, Facebook ads (and its Meta cousin Instagram ads) are the real threat to Google.
Meta raked in nearly $132 billion in ad revenue in 2023—not as much as Google, but a huge chunk of marketing dollars that may have otherwise been spent on its ad network.
In a lesser way, Facebook Marketplace diverts some traffic away from Google. Marketplace shoppers peruse products sold by individual sellers (not retailers). Over 1.2 billion people use Marketplace monthly, many of whom would have searched for “discount gaming tower” or “used furniture near me” on Google.
Pros
Facebook advertising provides a better financial return for many marketers. On average, an ad click on Facebook costs less than half of what an ad click costs on Google. And Facebook’s average conversion rate is much higher.
Like TikTok, Facebook and Instagram offer users more passive discovery options than Google gives. While flipping through those feeds, you’ll stumble on informational and promotional posts you didn’t know you wanted.
Cons
Facebook and Instagram aren’t great for active informational searches. Not many users will head there first when they want to know how tall the Eiffel Tower is or when the Chicago Bears last won the Super Bowl.
It’s also become increasingly difficult for marketers to gain a foothold on Facebook and Instagram organically. So, while you still have a good chance of driving search traffic with your brilliant blog posts, you may be frustrated with your non-paid traffic from Facebook.
ChatGPT
No other app burst on the scene faster than ChatGPT. In just a couple of short years, the AI-powered chatbot has over 180.5 million monthly users.
Sure, many people use the various versions of ChatGPT to write funny song lyrics and mock legal letters. But, a growing portion of users have found it to be a great platform for learning new things—one of the primary use cases for search engines.
There are even rumors of an upcoming ChatGPT-powered search engine, which caused a little anxiety at Google.
Pros
The big plug for ChatGPT in the search space is that it can mimic more natural conversation. In that way, it acts more like a search assistant, allowing you to ask questions and continue conversations instead of trying to find a keyword to coax information from a search engine. And there are no ads on the app, which makes for a clean user experience.
Some brands have started to see qualified traffic come from ChatGPT. That traffic comes mostly from the citation links the app adds to its responses.
Cons
The huge audience using ChatGPT doesn’t benefit marketers much since the app doesn’t offer paid ads. It’s also difficult, if not impossible, to motivate the app to cite your website in its answers. Like AI Overviews, ChatGPT is also prone to regurgitating content from existing sources, meaning it could closely paraphrase your content without sending you traffic.
Users may find that ChatGPT fills in false information, sometimes making up facts and even conjuring citations out of thin air. Learning how to prompt the chatbot for usable results properly can take time.
Reddit and Quora
Reddit has an interesting relationship with Google. On one hand, the two platforms benefit greatly from each other. Reddit is taking over Google results pages and getting a lot more traffic as a result. Meanwhile, Google inked a deal to let its large language model train on Reddit’s vast cache of conversational content.
On the other hand, many users skip the middleman and search on Reddit directly, which is why Reddit is on this list of Google competitors. If enough people make Reddit their first stop for answers, it’ll eat away a significant portion of Google’s traffic.
Recently, Quora has seen a similar representation in Google results and a corresponding traffic bump. But some will head right to Quora for answers without passing through Google first.
Pros
On Reddit and Quora, you get answers from real people who, to a varying degree, have direct experience with the topic at hand. You can also interact with them, asking follow-up questions and sharing your opinion. You cannot do that with a blog post you found on Google.
Forums like Reddit and Quora also have a faster quality feedback loop. Users can upvote or downvote a post or reply immediately, which dictates how visible the content is to future searchers. On Google, an algorithm works as an imperfect proxy to user sentiment, often prioritizing copycat content over unique points of view.
Cons
Paradoxically, the faster feedback loop slows down marketing efforts on Reddit and Quora. You need to put in the work to build lots of trust before sending people a link to your website or mentioning your product. Get too salesy too fast and face a dogpile of downvotes and potential expulsion by the forum moderator.
If you’re using forums as your informational search source, you have to remember the forum can be filled with falsehoods, either intentionally or by mistake. Well-meaning commenters may share “facts” they remember with zero credible sources to back them up. And antagonists could mislead people on purpose for their own agenda.
Amazon and Walmart.com
Here’s an interesting factoid: more shoppers start their search for products on Amazon than on search engines. That’s quite a boast for the one-time online bookstore.
It’s also notable that Walmart, the undisputed heavyweight of brick-and-mortar retail, isn’t far behind, with nearly a third of shoppers clicking to its website to start their product searches.
This suggests that lots of shoppers feel Amazon and Walmart offer a better product discovery experience than search engines. That has to give Google pause, especially since it continues to invest in its Google Shopping features.
Pros
Sure, both Walmart.com and Amazon have immense catalogs with hundreds of millions of products. But that’s not the differentiator (Google’s “catalog” includes listings from both websites, plus millions of other resellers).
What makes both Amazon and Walmart attractive to shoppers is consistency. On Google, you’ll get results from dozens of businesses, each with its own user experience and trust signals. On Walmart.com, you get a single, unified experience no matter what you buy.
Cons
The big dig for marketers here is that there’s no real room for content marketing. If you’re not selling a product through one of these platforms, you can’t drive traffic from them (without paid ads—and even that wouldn’t work for many business types like B2B software).
Of course, as a user, you’re not going to Amazon or Walmart to search for general knowledge. From that standpoint, they don’t compete with Google.
5 search engines also battling for Google’s business
Microsoft’s Bing is Google’s largest search competitor, with about 3.4% of the worldwide search market (and growing). But it’s also backed by a tech behemoth and similar enough to Google Search in operation.
What we’re looking for are the smaller players here. The little (search) engines that could. We want to see how they’re creating a truly different online experience
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo was launched in 2008. It’s held roughly 2% of the US search market for the last few years, an impressive feat given the competition from new search engines.
The search results on DuckDuckGo look like Google maybe 10 or 15 years ago. There are paid ads and image results, but little else on the unfussy page.
Pros
If privacy is your main concern, DuckDuckGo is your search engine. It never stores your IP addresses, browsing behavior, or search history. In short, DuckDuckGo doesn’t track you.
You’ll also get a cleaner page experience than Bing and fewer forum results (like Reddit or Quora) than Google from “the Duck.”
Cons
Since you’re not being tracked, don’t look for a lot of personalization on DuckDuckGo results. That may feel a little jarring if you’ve taught Google your preferences over time. Also, the simplicity of the search results means there are fewer additional features, like Google’s News, Books, and Flights options.
YouChat
YouChat is a personalized search assistant. Like ChatGPT, you can interact with YouChat more conversationally, and it will provide an AI-generated answer.
The search bot has several modes you can unlock by signing up for a free account.
Pros
YouChat works more like a real-time search engine than some other generative AI tools. For example, the app gave more comprehensive and correct answers in a head-to-head comparison with ChatGPT.
Cons
Even though it’s more reliable than some other search assistants, YouChat can still give erroneous answers. Plus, you’re limited in the citations you get from each query. It’s a little harder to quickly move between sources if you want to skim several articles.
Arc Search
When you enter a search query and click the “Browse for me” button on Arc Search, you don’t just get a list of links. You get a uniquely created webpage with a list of key details and several image-based links.
This new take on search is the brainchild of The Browser Company, a small startup blurring the lines between search engines, web browsers, and AI chatbots.
Pros
Arc Search uses AI differently than other apps in this list. Instead of attempting to spin up a new piece of content from scraped data, Arc gives you the topline information in quick bullet points while creating a webpage for each result that’s easy to explore.
Cons
Arc Search and the Arc Browser only work with Windows 11, Mac, and iOS. Your Android device and older Windows machine aren’t supported.
Arc is also a very new player in the field. It doesn’t have all the functionality of the much more mature Google. Ideally, that’ll change over time.
Brave Search
Brave Search is a privacy-focused search engine that blocks most ads and trackers by default. Its initial user experience is closer to that of Bing or Google. However, Brave offers more text for each result.
Brave provides AI answers to queries, but you have a couple of ways to control when they appear. You can click the “Answer with AI” option at the end of the query bar. Or you can pose your query in the form of a question. For example, the query “PR embargo” will get you a list of links, while the query “What is a PR embargo?” pulls up an AI answer before the links.
Like Arc, Brave Search is part of an ecosystem that includes a web browser, a video conferencing feature, its own cryptocurrency (which it offers as a reward to users who view ads), and more.
Pros
Brave’s default ad and tracker blocking is fantastic, but that’s almost table stakes for any search engine that wants to attract users from Google. Another feature, called Goggles, really sets Brave apart.
Brave Goggles lets you personalize your results pages with unique ranking signals. For example, you can prioritize articles from tech blogs or remove Pinterest results from your page.
You have the option of using a pre-made Goggle or submitting one of your own. There’s an existing Goggle that lets you remove copycat content, which could be really useful.
Cons
There are complaints about Brave Search returning irrelevant results. That could be because it’s based on its own home-grown index (which helps it remain unbiased). The best way to judge is to test it for yourself.
Perplexity AI
Perplexity AI is a chatbot-powered conversational search engine. Its interface works a little like ChatGPT, where you prompt it for a response. However, Perplexity AI is focused on helping you surface and organize web results rather than generating new content.
You can use Perplexity AI for free, but a paid Pro version (formerly Copilot) also leads you through complex searches with clarifying questions.
Pros
There’s a lot to love about using Perplexity AI for research. The Pro version is especially handy since it acts like a librarian, guiding you through the stacks of irrelevant content to find what you need.
Also, if you’re the type of searcher who sometimes needs to return to a search session, the Threads feature will be super helpful. It lets you store previous interactions, title them, share them, and edit or continue them as needed.
Cons
It’s a bit repetitive at this point, but Perplexity AI is prone to add incorrect facts to its answers. As with any AI output, it pays to double-check things before quoting them.
Another knock on this app is that it lacks the hugely diverse indexed data from more established options. That leads to sometimes short and vague responses.
Google’s death by a thousand cuts is a call for diversification and repurposing
Google is still the 8,000-pound gorilla in non-paid traffic. No other platform delivers nearly the same level of repeatable site visitation.
It’s unlikely any competitor will eat Google whole. DuckDuckGo, for example, has been treading water at around a 2% share of search for years. And some promising startups, like Neeva’s AI search engine, have barely lasted a year going up against Google. Instead, we’ll see dozens of competitors taking little bites.
For marketers, this calls for diversification and repurposing. Diversifying traffic sources will allow you to buffer the volatility of Google Search with site visits from other platforms. Repurposing content lets you address multiple sources in meaningful ways without multiplying the resources you spend doing it.
If you have questions about how to get more out of your search engine marketing, contact us. We’ll show you how we’ve helped thousands of businesses do it.