Differentiating Search Engines: Google, Bing, Safari, DuckDuckGo

Created: 19 August 2022 Author: Nicole Huang

Search engines are tools that help users navigate the web by sorting through databases per user-requested search. Search engines simplify the need to physically search through files to find necessary documents and resources. Through the process of crawling, indexing, and ranking, the search engine produces the search engine results page that is shown on the user device screen.

Search engines use web crawlers to search through the internet for website links relevant to the search topic. These selected webpages go through the process of indexing, searching through the webpage content for keywords, type of content, how recent the page was updated, and user engagement. Search engines index using a number of sources including robots.txt files and directives to decide the relevancy of the websites. The websites are ranked based on relevance and other qualifications based on the requirements of specific web browsers.

Search Engine Algorithms

Individual search engines evaluate websites and rank them with different algorithms. The search engine algorithm helps the system sort through documents to set aside web pages ordered in terms of relevancy. Some factors include location, language, search history, and accommodation to the specific device. Google algorithm also considers qualities such as user search intention, page relevance, quality of the content with information and backlinks, and page accessibility. Safari web browsers are centralized around Google search engines, due to Google being able to provide more consistent results with its algorithm.

Bing shares many of the same ranking systems as Google algorithms, but the Bing algorithm is also based on machine learning. This means that Bing results are mostly based on previous searches and rank documents based on the type of documents that the user typically selects or is attracted to. While Google is capable of recognizing synonyms as context for word relevancy, Bing prefers exact keywords to find the most desirable results. A benefit of the Bing search engine is that it favors domain authority websites such as .edu and .gov, for more reliable sources.

Search Engine SEOs

All search engines use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to improve search results. SEO is a set of regulations used as a basis for listing web search results. SEO is used to improve the quality of user experience and manage traffic on sites. SEO considers organic search results based on results without the influence of advertisement bids, the relevancy of the content compared to the search query, and the quantity of users engaged in the site. SEO ensures a healthy balance between multiple factors placed into the rankings of websites. There are 5 main SEO concepts that are vital for search engines.

Core Web Vitals are used to determine the quality of the user experience based on the content loading speed (< 5 seconds), how fast the website responds to user interaction with the website (< 100 ms), and cumulative layout shift from the frequency of unregulated changes from one-page layout to another (< 0.1 CLS).
Mobile-First Indexing focuses on ranking signals from sites on mobile devices due to the high web traffic primarily from mobile platforms. This includes fixing broken links, making sure everything appears and functions as expected, and compressing necessary files.
Reliance on machine learning and automation to guess the content of user queries and the intended search results expected.
E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) concept to prioritize more reliable content quality.
Semantic search is used to understand the context of user queries and acknowledge the relationship between how words are placed to understand what direction to search for with words used in a specific context.

As a result, all SEOs must ensure the following to meet all these qualifications:

Keyword research: identify the most suitable terms for search engines to associate with the search term.
Content marketing: developing a strategy that would increase visitation rates by creating multiple pages with similar content or topics.
On-Page SEO: ensure perfect web structure and associate relevant keywords to each webpage of the site.
Link building: backlink from reputable and authoritative sites
SEO Outsourcing: Find a reliable SEO agency to accommodate customer reviews and focus on providing effective SEO strategies for the website.

History

The first search engine was produced in 1990 called Archie by Alan Emtage to navigate FTP sites. Archie was able to find relevant documents on the internet but its indexing system was flawed. Archie was capable of crawling through the internet and listing relevant sites, however, was not capable of further indexing the content of the document to customize a resulting list.

In 1993, Martin Koster created a version of Archie that would index the Web results based on Matthew Gray’s WWWW bot that is able to navigate through website URLs. In December of the same year, search engine bots, World Wide Web Worm, and JumpStation were introduced to use linear search to filter websites from the web-based on the title and URL. However, the search engine was only able to order the websites in the order that the website was found until 1994 when Brian Pinkerton released the WebCrawler that was able to index entire pages of the web. The closest version of the current search engines was Ask Jeeves launched in 1997 which would be able to search based on search queries.

Google

Google search, initially named Backrub, was launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The developers created an algorithm during their studies that would improve search engines to organize all data and allow computers to successfully access relevant content. The BackRub was designed to track website pages linked to websites to check for relevancy. The results were ranked based on how many links are associated with the website. Initially, Google was only designed to assist with online searches.

The growth of the web made Google build multiple data centers around the world to store data. Google mainly relies on the Google File System, Bigtable, and MapReduce for its systems to function. The Google File System manages all the data being stored in the database program known as Bigtable. MapReduce is used for the search engine to store high-level data to manage and navigate websites with indices of relevant terms. Later, it began to develop and accommodate many applications that add to the growing functionality of the browser.

Safari

Steve Jobs introduced Safari to Apple products in 2003 as one of the fastest web browsers for its laptop products. Introducing a web browser just for Apple products gave Apple more leniency with how they wanted their users to browse the web.

Apple initially developed a WebCore browser engine to develop an HTML framework for Apple’s Mac OS X products. To improve browsing standards, Apple developed Webkit which later became an open source, allowing other phone companies to implement the search engine system in collaboration with Apple. However, Google and other developers began taking over the projects on Windows. In 2007, Apple introduced Safari on its iPhone, becoming the first portable web browser on a cellphone device.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo was founded by Gabriel Weinberg in February 2008. Gabriel Weinberg created the search engine to improve user experience by placing a limit on spam. Initially, DuckDuckGo only offered responses to queries instead of providing links to websites like other existing search engines. While DuckDuckGo is effective in what it is designed to do, it is not widely known, thus not as frequently used as other search engines such as Google.

Bing

Bing was launched in 2009 by Microsoft Corporation, replacing its predecessor search engine Live Search. Bing is uniquely designed to make better decisions by collecting more information from websites to better analyze the relevancy and whether the information would “satisfy” the queries. With the collected data, Bing is able to help users indicate related searches that are connected to the initial query. In July of 2009, Bing made an agreement to collaborate with Yahoo!. Yahoo! Would be able to adapt the Bing search engine to its browser. In February 2010, Bing collaborated with Facebook to allow Facebook users to use Bing searches when navigating the Web. With the influence of collaborating companies, Bing was able to grow in exposure and usage, making it second to Google.

Unique Search Engine Features

Google

Google, as one of the first search engines, is the #1 search engine known for its trustworthy and effective search algorithms, crawling, indexing, and ranking. Google produces relevant search results and responses at a consistent faster speed. Google also implements search settings and tools to help filter data to meet user needs. Google has the largest search index and is always updating/improving its algorithms and ranking signals with the machine-learning AI known as RankBrain. While Safari does not completely remove all ads, Google is considering making adjustments to Chrome in an effort to remove ads with ad blockers as users navigate between websites.

Bing

Bing is the second largest search engine and is an alternative for Google due to many of its similar and effective features. Bing is able to produce similar search results such as images, videos, news, etc. Like all search engines, Bing uses the crawl, index, and rank system. However, it is unique because it uses a Space Partition Tree and Graph (SPTAG) algorithm as the backbone for its search algorithm. SPTAG is a library vector search where the resulting sites that answer a query with the shortest vector distance or relevancy are returned. This is a cheaper and more accurate search algorithm through multiple data sources, but Bing has not been able to index data at a similar rate as Google.

Unlike Google, Bing does not use a mobile-first indexing policy. In addition, Bing is able to suggest SEO best practice improvements on a regular basis. Bing focuses more on visuals such as including relevant images and better video search ranking large thumbnails that make more relevant videos show up.

Safari

Safari mainly focuses on the user experience aspect including privacy and speed. Safari is unique in that it prevents third-party cookies that are tracking users for more than 24 hours to ensure privacy with the Intelligent Tracking Prevention. Safari also has a fingerprint protection system that provides pages seeking information with a simplified random profile. Apple’s Safari ensures that its platform is fast and efficient for its users, removing unnecessary ads to improve the user experience. They are reliable in dealing with page crashes or malicious code by ensuring that one mishap would not mess up the rest of the system. This is done with their sandboxing method when each tab search is separated from everything else.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a search engine that shows relevant results and prided itself on the fact that it does not track user traces on the internet. DuckDuckGo does not track any user cross-app actions, search history, IP address, etc. Basically, any identifying feature of the device being used is not recorded and all searches are completely anonymous. DuckDuckGo is also designed to be efficient and easy to use, improving the simplicity of the user experience.

Next Big Changes for Search Engines

Semantic search helps search engines make predictions such as completing queries or comprehend words and phrases being searched. Semantic search creates connections between terms and phrases to identify corresponding inputs. This helps create more accurate search results that accommodate users. Rather than searching for the exact term and showing documents with the same term, semantic search analyzes and interprets the terms, associating them with better phrases to help filter the search subject. There may still be some inaccuracies since the words we interpret as humans are vast. Therefore, more improvements will be made to improve the accuracy of search engines until they are able to read our minds and find exactly what we are looking for with a snap of fingers.