Google is the lord and emperor of search (regardless of what Microsoft Bing has going on with OpenAI). But its focus on commercially-slanted results means people looking for personal blogs or generally “rough around the edges” content will struggle to find it. That’s where alternative search engines come in, built on top of their own indexes.
Rohan Kumar took a deep dive into a list of search engines with his own indexes including the main ones: Google, Bing, Yandex, as well as lesser known search engines such as Mojeek and Huawei’s Petal Search. But then Rohan really goes down the rabbit hole with “small or non-commercial Web” options like Marginalia and user-submitted indexes like Wiby.
It’s always good to look at the alternatives without needing them to knock Google off the top. Search is a journey and sometimes you want to take the scenic route to reach your destination and, if that doesn’t work, you get your proverbial map app out and try not to get lost.