You may have spent your whole life using Google as your go-to search engine. Its dominance is so overwhelming that it’s hard to think of a rival at all.
However, a new contender, Qwant, has emerged in recent years with a bold mission: to challenge Google’s supremacy.
It’s undeniable that Google has become a giant in the search engine market, but that doesn’t mean alternatives don’t exist. In fact, Qwant is proving to be a strong competitor, offering top-notch services with a fresh approach.
For those interested in seeing how tech giants compete in other fields, check out our in-depth comparison of Google vs. Microsoft Cloud for insights into their cloud computing offerings.
Are you wondering whether to stick with Google or give Qwant a try? Let’s dive into a detailed comparison to understand their features and weigh the pros and cons.
Google vs. Qwant– A detailed comparison
Search Engine Market Overview
The total search engine market can reach $20.6 trillion by 2027, according to the resarchandmarkets website. It implies that you can have a slew of different products in this market.
Before comparing Google and Qwant, you should remember that each search engine belongs to a specific category depending on how it works.
Nevertheless, it will help you understand the bigger picture behind the contrast. So, first, let’s start with Google, and then we will explain Qwant.
Google:
Google is an all-in-one search engine that provides the best search results based on the website’s ranking. Do you know that Google has an 86.31% market share in the UK, according to Statista? The same goes for the Global market.
It implies that most of the world’s population trusts Google for their day-to-day search. So, with a goal “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” it evolved to absorb user-driven search results.
Features of Google:
1. Targeted ads:
This feature defines most of Google’s work. As it has become a data powerhouse, marketers and business owners use it to leverage their business. As a result, promoting your business has become the most significant market.
It provides you with the best user data to target them based on their demographics, gender, age, interest, and other essential metrics.
2. Saves users vital information:
You would be surprised to know that Google knows you better than yourself. It may sound ridiculous to you, but it’s the reality. For instance, you won’t remember where you had lunch last week, but it saves this information.
Why does it that? If you take a sneak peek into its privacy policy, you will get to know that it wants to give a better user experience; that’s why it saves your data.
It saves the place where you live, your gender, interests, youtube videos you watched, email addresses, and much more.
3. Gives feature snippets:
When you search for anything on the internet, you want instant results. People are often in a hurry and need to know about their search queries.
Once your press search, you get a featured snippet at the top of your search results. It provides a concise yet pinpoint result of your query.
For example, you searched for SEO tips, and it provided a short yet to-the-point snippet for you.
4. Multimedia search:
Sometimes you don’t want to get textual information for your search query. For that matter, you can search for pictures and videos as well.
It also provides timestamps about the video. So often, you see the best video in your SERPs.
5. Personalized search options:
Apart from multimedia, you may need some specific information. Instead of searching it in the search bar and then going through the results one by one, you can choose the right search category.
In this way, you will locate the search results quickly. To get the news, go to the news search option.
Similarly, it contains other options like Finance and Books. So, if you are a book savvy or finance enthusiast, you can get those insights here.
6. Provides “people also ask" section:
Google’s search algorithms are an example of state-of-the-art AI technology. Using machine learning algorithms provides relevant search options apart from the search results.
It helps you locate your actual answer without even clicking on any website.
Facilitates your understanding with a knowledge panel:
When you search for some entity like an organization, a historical figure, a place, or anything that stores information and is worth knowing, you just search for it.
You will get a knowledge panel containing key facts and figures about that entity.
These are some of the basic features of the Google search engine. Now let’s move toward its pros and cons.
Pros:
1. A global search engine:
According to Oberelo, a whopping 92% of searches come from Google. As evident from this fact, it has become a global search engine.
Since everyone uses it, it contains enormous information in its database. Therefore, people prefer using it because they know they will get the required information.
2. Gives relevant results:
Its algorithms have become more clever than ever. For instance, The HummingBird algorithm uses machine learning algorithms and searches for the best-written content for your search query.
Moreover, it uses NLP or Natural language processing to find the proper semantics for a search query.
Thus, even if your content doesn’t get stuffed with keywords, it understands the content. If it’s valuable, it shows you as the top result.
3. Facilitates businesses to sell their products/services:
Like every search engine, it helps businesses scale up through Google Adwords, trends, and keyword planner tool. Thus, it helps you grow naturally through search engine optimization. You may also target your audience by displaying ads.
Cons:
1. Less private searching:
Nowadays, people are concerned about their privacy, fearing their valuable data may get into the wrong hands. Moreover, it looks like a scary picture when you know that someone is tracking you.
Google has this drawback: It doesn’t assure complete privacy and allows websites to save your cookie data.
2. Censor’s prejudicial data:
As Google grew with its wide range of products, it started using censorship tactics to block certain kinds of data. So, if you are looking for an independent and decentralized platform, then Google might not be your choice.
3. Website penalty:
You can feel the pain of penalty if you are a website owner, blogger, or SEO expert. Due to a massive daily influx of websites on Google, it’s becoming hard to rank your website on top SERPs. Moreover, its algorithms’ updates penalise websites regularly, thus de-ranking them.
Qwant:
It appeared in the market in 2013 as the most private search engine. Compared to Duck Duck Go, it’s stricter in its privacy policy and assures users to protect their anonymity. However, the Qwant team believes you need not surrender your privacy for a good web surfing experience.
Breaking away from the myths around marketing, it has seen tremendous growth during the past few years. Currently, it ranks as the 6th best search engine in France and Europe, getting almost 32 million visitors in May 2022.
Let’s explore its features to find out if it’s better for you.
Features of Qwant:
It has some distinct features that differ it from the other search engines on the internet. You can find some of them here.
1. Custom search shortcuts:
Isn’t it fascinating to use shortcut words instead of long website names when searching the internet?
Qwant provides the ease to choose or even create your search jargon. For example, if you want to open amazon, you can open it using the symbol “& or !” before your website.
They have a massive list of shortcut searches. In addition, you can check their website to find your favorite platform.
It’s interesting to note that you can submit your shortcut to their database without hassle.
2. Takes care of your privacy:
Qwant is dedicated to privacy and takes a step further to keep you anonymous on its platform. This company opines the ideals that your gender, race, interests, searches, and anything confidential belongs not to anyone but to know. So, it’s your privilege to keep your sensitive information safe from marketers, hackers, or businesses.
3. Provides access to a neutral internet:
These search engines that track your data give the results based on that information. Unfortunately, it sometimes gives biased and prejudicial search results, making it hard to differentiate between right and wrong facts. It helps you access the neutral web every time you use this search engine.
4. Shows non-targeted ads:
As your data, you haven’t shared your data with anyone on the internet, and you don’t get ads targeted to your data. Therefore, it makes it easier for you to avoid the temptation of ads. However, you may get some ads based on your search query.
5. Gives fast navigation:
The browsing experience lags when the websites get covered with ads. It disrupts the user experience as well. Qwant, however, provides fast navigation because it doesn’t allow websites to install their cookies on your browser.
6. Customises your searches:
Qwant provides three different ways to channelise your searches. For example, sometimes you want to find the location of a particular hotel. Then, you can navigate through the maps to access the right place.
Similarly, if you think your search engine mode isn’t safe for children, you can use the junior version.
Pros:
1. Arrange websites:
You can use qwant to arrange websites depending on their use and preference in a list. For instance, it provides public and a private lineup of your preferred websites. Then, you just need to click and drag them where you want to organize them.
2. A diverse range of searching:
Based on varied results, this search engine allows you to find pictures, videos, shopping, maps, and much more on one single platform.
3. Strict data protection:
It’s cookie-free and takes extreme measures to keep your data safe. For example, it doesn’t record your data on its databases. Moreover, It’s in line with the new privacy laws passed in Europe.
The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR is the European law against data breaches and the right to forgetting internet data. Qwant abides by this law and curtails any data leakage from its ecosystem.
Cons:
1. Strict data protection:
Qwant is not a meta-search engine with algorithms that help it index web pages. But, it does take the help of Bing databases to augment its search queries where it doesn’t find the relevant result. The same goes for images that are greater in size.
2. Selected area search:
Qwant provides safe yet specific search area options. For example, while using this search engine, you can select the country to get the results you want to see.
Meanwhile, you can’t search for the country of your choice because it provides a specific number of countries, mainly in Europe and America.
3. Less search time limit:
As it doesn’t store minimum information on its databases, it does not provide older search results. Therefore, only the updated searches can take place on this search engine.
For instance, it gives a maximum of one month of search time. You cannot search beyond this time. Nevertheless, not getting older results may affect the quality of search results.
4. Slow image loading:
Though Qwant has a sleek and intuitive design, it can’t provide super-fast results. Sometimes, it takes seconds to load pictures on a webpage. Therefore, it has slow algorithms right now.
5. Uses Javascript to search:
Almost every browser has built-in Javascript. It makes it easier to work smoothly without any external need for this scripting language. For example, Qwant can’t work if you haven’t enabled javascript.
Final Words: Google vs. Qwant
There are a plethora of search engines available in the market. Some are faster than others, while others are more private. Depending upon their features, they can help you in various ways.
For instance, if you are looking for a global search engine and want to market your products, you should use Google.
It’s the best among all search engines. However, if you want privacy and an independent search engine, you can move to Qwant. We have given a detailed comparison of both. You can look at their features and pros and cons in this article.
