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 | Data Source |
|---|---|---|
| Ask.com (defunct) | Multilingual | |
| Baidu | Chinese | Baidu |
| Brave Search | Multilingual | Brave |
| Dogpile | English | Metasearch engine |
| DuckDuckGo | Multilingual | Multiple |
| Ecosia | Multilingual | Google and Microsoft Bing |
| Elasticsearch | Multilingual | Elasticsearch |
| Exalead | Multilingual | Cloudview |
| Excite† | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
| Multilingual | ||
| HotBot | English | Microsoft Bing |
| Kagi | English | Metasearch engine and Kagi |
| Lycos | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
| MetaCrawler | English | Metasearch engine |
| Microsoft Bing | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
| Mojeek | Multilingual | Mojeek |
| Petal | Multilingual | Huawei |
| Presearch | Multilingual | Presearch |
| Qwant | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
| Sogou | Multilingual | Tencent |
| Startpage | English | |
| Swisscows | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
| WebCrawler | English | Microsoft Bing |
| Yahoo! Search† | Multilingual | Microsoft Bing |
| Yandex | Multilingual | Yandex |
| Yep | English | Yep |
| Youdao† | Chinese | NetEase |
| You.com | English | Microsoft Bing |
Open Source
| Name | Language | License |
|---|---|---|
| Opensearch | Multilingual | Apache License 2.0 |
| SearXNG | Multilingual | GNU Affero General Public License |
| YaCy | Multilingual | GNU GPL-2.0-or-later |
Geographically localized
Business
- Business.com
- Daily Stocks
- GenieKnows (United States and Canada)
- GlobalSpec
- Thomasnet (United States)
- Justdial (India)
Computers
Content
- Openverse, search engine for open content.
Dark web
Education
Enterprise
- Apache Solr
- Jumper 2.0: Universal search powered by Enterprise bookmarking
- Oracle Secure Enterprise Search 10g
- Q-Sensei: Q-Sensei Enterprise
- Swiftype: Swiftype Search
- TeraText: TeraText Suite
Events
Food and recipes
- RecipeBridge: vertical search engine for recipes
- Yummly: semantic recipe search
Genealogy
- Mocavo.com: family history search engine
Job
- 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)
- Yahoo! HotJobs (Country-wise 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
- Bing News
- Google News
- Dailyhunt (India)
- Priyo
- Yahoo! News
People
Real estate/property
Television
Travel
Video
Video games
By data type
Search engines dedicated to a specific kind of information
Datasets
Maps
Multimedia
- Bing Videos
- blinkx
- FindSounds
- Google Images
- Google Video
- Munax's PlayAudioVideo
- Openverse, search engine for open content.
- Picsearch
- Podscope
- SeeqPod
- Sepia Search
- Songza
- Tencent Video
- TinEye
- TV Genius
- Veveo
- Yahoo! Video
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
- Fabasoft
- Google Search Appliance - discontinued
- Munax
- Searchdaimon
- Thunderstone
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] | Proprietary, commercial |
| 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. | Proprietary (30 day trial) |
| DocFetcher | Cross-platform | Open-source desktop search tool for Windows and Linux, based on Apache Lucene | Eclipse Public |
| dtSearch Desktop | Windows | Proprietary (30 day trial) | |
| Everything | Windows | Find files and folders by name instantly on NTFS volumes | Freeware |
| Found | macOS | Searches for files stored locally, and the cloud and inbox and, is summoned with a double-tap of the ctrl key. Program now discontinued. | Free, proprietary |
| GNOME Storage | Linux | Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux | GPL |
| Google Desktop | Linux, macOS, Windows | Integrates with main Google search engine page; discontinued by Google September 14, 2011 | Freeware |
| ISYS Search Software | Windows | ISYS:Desktop search software | Proprietary (14-day trial) |
| KRunner | Linux | ||
| Locate32 | Windows | Graphical port of Unix's locate & updatedb | BSD[6] |
| Lookeen | Windows | Desktop search product with Outlook plugin and limited support for other formats via IFilters, uses Lucene search engine. | Proprietary (14-day trial)[7] |
| Nepomuk | Linux | Open-source semantic desktop search tool for Linux. Has been replaced by Baloo in KDE Applications from release 4.13 onward. | Mix of SA 3.0 and GNU Free Documentation v1.2 |
| Recoll | Linux, Unix, Windows, macOS | Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux | GPL[8] |
| Spotlight | macOS | Found in Apple macOS "Tiger" and later OS X releases. | Proprietary |
| Strigi | Linux, Unix, Solaris, macOS, Windows | Cross-platform open-source desktop search engine. Unmaintained since 2011-06-02[9]. | LGPL v2[10] |
| Terrier Search Engine | Linux, macOS, Unix | Desktop search for Windows, Mac OS X Tiger, Unix/Linux. | Mozilla Public v1.1[11] |
| Tracker | Linux, Unix | Open-source desktop search tool for Unix/Linux | GPL v2[12] |
| Tropes Zoom | Windows | Semantic Search Engine (no longer available)[13] | Freeware and commercial |
| Unity Dash | Linux | Was part of Ubuntu Desktop | GPL v3,[14] LGPL v2.1[15] |
| 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 x86-64 systems. | Proprietary |
| X1 Desktop Search | Windows | Major desktop search product along with Copernic Desktop Search | Proprietary (14-day trial)[16] |
| Wumpus | Cross platform | Desktop search focused on information retrieval research | GPL |
Child-safe search engines
Metasearch engines
| Name | Language |
|---|---|
| Dogpile | English |
| Excite | English |
| Info.com | English |
| Kayak.com | Multilingual |
| MetaCrawler | English |
| MetaGer | Multilingual |
| Mobissimo | Multilingual |
| Otalo.com | English |
| PCH Search and Win | |
| SearXNG | Multilingual |
| Skyscanner | Multilingual |
| Wego.com | Multilingual |
Natural language
- Ask.com
- Bing (Semantic ability is powered by Powerset)
- Lexxe
- Perplexity.ai
- SearchGPT
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
Semantic browsing engines
| Name | Description | Speciality |
|---|---|---|
| Evi | Specialises in knowledge base and semantic search | answer engine |
| Swoogle | Searching over 10,000 ontologies | Semantic web documents |
| Yebol | defunct | |
| Yummly | Semantic web search for food, cooking, and recipes | food related |
Social search engines
Usenet
- Google Groups (formerly Deja News)
Visual search engines
By popularity
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 | Taken over by Google after Google sued for name similarity | |
| Mamma.com | Copernic | |
| MySpace Search | Function taken over by Google in 2006 | |
| Mystery Seeker | Novelty "search"; went offline in 2017 | |
| Netscape | Now redirects to AOL | |
| Ripple | as of 2017 at the latest | |
| Ecocho | Google, then Yahoo! | |
| Forestle | Google, then Yahoo! | Redirected to Ecosia in 2011 |
| Searx | open-source | SearXNG is defacto successor |
| Yippy | IBM Watson | Re-branded in 2023 as Togoda.com[17][18] |
| Grams | Grams (anonymous owner) | Closed in 2017 |
| Gigablast | English | Website went offline in 2023, as reported by Mojeek.[19] |
- 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)[20]
- 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
- Neeva (acquired by Snowflake)
- 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[21]
- Wikia Search
- WiseNut
- World Wide Web Worm
See also
- List of academic databases and search engines
- List of web directories
- Search aggregator – Type of metasearch engine
- Search engine optimization – Practice and strategies of increasing online visibility
- Category:Search engine software
References
- "Kurdish Swede creates first Kurdish search engine". Bas News. Archived from the original on 2014-01-02. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
- "First Kurdish Search Engine, Egerin, Is Launched". SBWire. 30 December 2013. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
- "This Entrepreneur Wants to Build a Kurdish Alternative to Google". Vice.com. 18 March 2016.
- Sullivan, Danny (April 18, 2007). "Goodbye Froogle, Hello Google Product Search!". Search Engine Land. Retrieved 3 June 2018.
- "HP Universal Search". Archived from the original on 2015-05-16. Retrieved 2014-07-01.
- "Download Locate32 3.1.11.7100". softpedia. 20 August 2012.
- "Lookeen 10". Lookeen. Retrieved 2016-02-03.
- According to Recoll
- See "Strigi's Release Files". Retrieved 2024-01-18.
- COPYING inside version 0.5.10 tar.bz2 package.
- "Terrier License". GitHub. 13 November 2021.
- According to COPYING Deprecated link archived 2012-07-14 at archive.today in SVN trunk.
- "Retrieved 15 August 2015". Archived from the original on 6 August 2019. Retrieved 16 August 2015.
- "Unity on GitHub". GitHub. 19 November 2021.
- "Required License Files". GitHub. 19 November 2021.
- "X1 Search 8". X1 Technologies. Retrieved 12 July 2014.
- "At Togoda, we are revolutionizing the search experience through advanced thematic AI exploration. | Togoda AI Search Engine". www.linkedin.com. Retrieved 2025-07-22.
- "Togoda Search Engine - The Educated Choice for Search". Togoda. Retrieved 2025-07-22.
- "Farewell Gigablast (for now?)". blog.mojeek.com.
- "Data, Data, Everywhere Data. Now a Better Way to Understand It". 27 March 2015.
- "Il dominio Volunia.it è in vendita". MRW.it News. 11 April 2014.