SearchEngines.Net put out a useful 2026 crib sheet on who actually crawls: Google, Bing, Yandex, Baidu, Naver, Seznam, Cốc Cốc at national/global scale; Mojeek, Brave, Marginalia among independents; Staan as the Ecosia/Qwant European build. Hybrids (Qwant, Ecosia, DuckDuckGo, Kagi, Sogou) blend. Keep that list taped above your monitor when someone asks for “multi-engine SEO” without defining engines.
The SEO implication is blunt. Optimising for a reseller is often optimising for Bing or Google with extra steps. Optimising for Mojeek, Brave, Yandex, or Baidu means different crawlers, different passage extraction, different failure modes. AI answer surfaces make the split sharper: a reseller’s chatbot may still cite Bing-grounded passages, while Brave’s LLM Context or Staan’s API may prefer different chunks from your pages.
Keep a living matrix: engine, index owner, AI answer surface, webmaster tools, primary geo. Update it when joint ventures like EUSP change the mix. That spreadsheet will save more client arguments than another generic “AI SEO” deck. Pair it with the EU Vetted scorecard for European packaging claims.
Comparisons that matter in practice: Seznam and Cốc Cốc remain national-scale own indexes people forget; Kagi mixes own small-web crawl with third-party commercial results; DuckDuckGo leads on privacy UX while renting web results; Ecosia/Qwant are mid-transition. None of those sentences are insults — they are scope statements.
Caveats: index ownership changes slowly but APIs and AI wrappers change monthly; “independent” can mean crawl independence, ranking independence, or jurisdiction independence — pick which one your client actually needs. Review the matrix every quarter and force kickoff workshops to name target engines before anyone promises rankings.
Use the short list in sales conversations too. When a prospect asks whether you “do international SEO”, answer with which indexes you actually operate against and which you only monitor. That honesty closes fewer fantasy deals and keeps more real ones. The SearchEngines.Net crib sheet is a convenient neutral third party to cite when egos flare.
Revisit hybrids quarterly. Ecosia’s German ramp can move a row from “mostly Bing” toward “mixed EUSP”. Kagi’s third-party mix can shift. Your matrix is a living document, not a poster.
Print the matrix once a quarter and force a red-pen update in the team meeting so it cannot rot in Notion unread.
Training juniors on this list early prevents years of muddled reporting. Have them classify ten consumer search brands cold, then check against SearchEngines.Net and EU Vetted. The embarrassment of calling Startpage an index operator is educational — and cheaper than repeating the mistake in a client workshop.
Also track AI answer surfaces as their own column even when the underlying index is resold. A Bing-backed engine with a distinctive chatbot still changes click paths, even if your “ranking” work remains Bing SEO in disguise.