The 7 Best Mobile Search Engines

Mobile search engines work great on phones and tablets

Mobile search engines are useful for browsing the web from a tablet or smartphone. While there are lots of search engines out there, not all of them are optimized for mobile users.

A mobile search engine is more important now than ever before as more and more people drop their desktops in favor of shopping, researching, and finding websites from their mobile devices.

Below is an overview of seven of the best search engines for mobile users. Each is easy to use from a variety of devices and provides accurate results. 

These picks are usable from the web browser on your device, so you don't need to download an app. However, all of them do have dedicated mobile apps, too, so below are links to the web versions and the apps.

01
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Google mobile search engine on Android
What We Like
  • Has unique features.

  • Provides web, image, and other searches.

  • Integrates with the company's other services.

What We Don't Like
  • Sometimes mixes results from other search categories.

  • Some search filters are missing, only available from the desktop version.

The same Google you're used to is also available as a mobile search engine, offering quick results with the option to search locally for images, maps, and much more.

If you decide to log in to your Google account, your searches, history, and preferences will be synced across whatever devices you use, making your experience as streamlined and seamlessly integrated as possible.

Of all the mobile search engines out there, this one resembles its desktop version the most. The advanced Google Search commands are even supported.

You can use it from any device by visiting the Google home page, but there's also an app for Android, iPad, and iPhone.

02
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JustWatch: Find Free and Cheap Movie Streams

JustWatch mobile search engine on Android
What We Like
  • Available in dozens of countries.

  • Customizable to you.

  • View trending searches.

  • Supports movies and TV shows.

What We Don't Like
  • Can become cluttered and hard to use.

JustWatch is a movie search engine that saves you time when you're looking for something new to watch.

Not only does it scour the internet to show you the latest and most popular films people are streaming, it's an excellent way to see where you can watch a specific title. It even shows you where to watch free movies, or how much the title costs if it's not free.

What makes this search engine stand out is how comprehensive it is. You can tell it which streaming platforms you subscribe to, and it'll filter the results so they are relevant to just you.

Some of the sort options include release year and TMDB popularity. You can also filter videos by price, genre, age rating, and IMDb rating.

The website works well, but if you'd like to have a dedicated app, it's available for mobile devices and smart TVs.

03
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YouTube mobile search engine
What We Like
  • Finds all kinds of videos.

  • Includes a restricted mode.

  • Has filtering options to refine searches.

  • Supports lots of languages.

What We Don't Like
  • Missing many of the filtering options found in the desktop version.

YouTube is always a great choice for streaming music, watching trending videos, staying up to date with news channels, and more. The mobile version is identical to the desktop version, with a few exceptions.

When you run a search, you get two options: choose to search for channels, playlists, or all content; and show videos that were updated anytime or just the ones from today, this week, this month, or this year. The settings let you turn on Restricted Mode and change the language and location.

YouTube's mobile site also lets you watch Shorts and access your subscriptions and library.

The app lets you do a lot more, like filter by upload date and view count, or by type (movie, video, playlist, etc.).

04
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Amazon: Find Products to Have Delivered to Your Home

Amazon mobile search engine
What We Like
  • Searches for consumer products.

  • Huge number of filtering options.

  • Search results can be sorted a handful of ways.

  • Provides delivery details without having to access your account.

What We Don't Like
  • Shows sponsored posts before organic ones.

Search for deals on the go with Amazon. This comes in handy especially when you want to compare prices online and offline.

If you have Amazon Prime, you can filter the search results to show only Prime-eligible items. There are also tons of filtering options that are different for every search item. For example, when searching for a TV, you can filter by seller, brand, price, model year, screen size, resolution, connectivity type, and more.

Amazon's mobile search engine also lets you find items that can be delivered tomorrow, and it lets you sort by price, customer rating, and new arrivals.

Open it on your phone or tablet to get the browser version, or download the Android or iOS app for extra features like a reverse search to find items by an image or barcode, and built-in Alexa support.

05
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Twitter mobile search engine options
What We Like
  • Includes an advanced search tool for more precise searches.

  • Shows trending searches.

  • Lets you sort and filter the results a number of ways.

What We Don't Like
  • Must log in to perform searches.

While X (formerly called Twitter) is used primarily as a microblogging application, it's starting to morph into a legitimate search engine, especially when used from your mobile device when looking for breaking news or local events.

Because of the extensive number of users and small character count for posts, X tends to be updated much faster than typical news outlets.

You can perform a basic search to find the top tweets or the latest ones. Open X's advanced search page to hide sensitive content, find tweets near your physical location, exclude words from the results, find tweets between specific dates only, and more.

The mobile website works within your browser, but you can also get X as an app for your phone or tablet.

06
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Yahoo Search: Simple and Easy to Use

Yahoo mobile search engine on Android
What We Like
  • Clean and uncluttered interface.

  • Quick access to web, news, and other searches.

  • Extremely easy to use.

What We Don't Like
  • Zero advanced options or filtering features.

Yahoo's mobile search engine is very simple. It lets you search for web pages, news, images, and videos in a clean interface. The home page also shows the top 10 current trending topics.

The only settings you can change are whether you want to enable or disable SafeSearch, and how many results should be visible on each page. You can also view your search history and/or turn it off.

The mobile version of Yahoo Search isn't the only way to get this search engine. For a fuller experience that matches the desktop version more, you can get the mobile app for Android or iOS.

07
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DuckDuckGo: Private, Encrypted Web Searches

DuckDuckGo mobile site in Chrome for Android
What We Like
  • Doesn't track your web searches.

  • Lots of filtering options.

  • Highly customizable.

What We Don't Like
  • It's cluttered compared to other mobile search engines.

DuckDuckGo is another web search engine like Yahoo's and Google's, but its primary difference is that it's focused on privacy—it doesn't track what you look up on the internet.

Another defining feature is that the mobile version supports a massive variety of filtering options. You can restrict web page results to ones updated the past day only, for example, and find images of a certain size or color, videos of a particular duration, and more.

Beyond search options are general settings, appearance options, and other details that you can change from the settings.

To use it on your tablet or phone, open the DuckDuckGo website or use the app on Android or iOS.

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