Makes sense. Google is actively making their search engine worse to try to monetize it more, so other options have become much better than Google. Also their results seem to have steeply declined in the last few years. I get much better results on DDG (so, Bing by proxy).
tl/dr: Bing is second with 4% and Yandex is third.
My guess is people use Bing when Microsoft literally forces them to or they don't know how to change it (start menu search, Edge default), for downloadable images, and porn.
Yandex is the only search engine available without fuss in Russia.
I'm honestly really surprised that Baidu doesn't have ~20% of the market.
Can someone who knows more than me about China maybe explain?
Interestingly, DDG (using bing) usually gives me the same or better results as google itself. As for yandex, while it is russian it has an english .com version as well and it has the somewhat unique ability to find things the american engines filter out, coming in handy when looking for certain things 🚢 ☠️.
So that might make a decent subset of (western) users use those engines deliberately
I'm using Ecosia, which is (as far as I know) based on Bing and I really like it. The search quality really isn't bad at all. (and I'm searching a lot online)
Also it feels more to what I'm used to, without AI answers and other stuff that I don't like at the top of the results.
Baidu(and other mainland search engines) doesn't publish stats, and it's harder to track internal traffic given no part of the traffic should reach international routers.
Yandex is also used in the US and anywhere where the US government is less trustworthy than Russia.
These are Statcounter stats, which are typically put together by tacking traffic reported by web sources. I'm guessing Chinese search may not be referring too many people to the sites that contribute info to Statcounter.
Also worth noting that AI search isn't counted hear, as far as the original source can tell. Maybe Google users are more likely to migrate to AI solutions (or just have more AI solutions available) than some of the alternatives listed here.
Honest question - why the down votes? I've used the free Kagi searches for several quite specific things that ddg (Bing) anf Google failed and found the results very well-suited. I just haven't exhausted my 300 free searches yet so haven't had a need. What does the community have a negative opinion about it for?