What’s your secondary search engine?

When you don’t find what you’re looking for in Google, what’s the next search engine that you use?  Well, according to a new study, most browsers go to Yahoo and Ask.

Chitika gathered data from 39,233 users who searched for the same keywords in different search engines. Over 49 percent switched to Yahoo, more than 30 percent went to Ask, more than 16 percent consulted Bing, and 3.8 percent decided to use AOL.

Initially, Bing was considered to be more popular than Ask, but the new data shows otherwise. In fact, Ask is much stronger than what other previously thought.

“It kind of goes to show that, when you’re really struggling to find something, you’ll skip past what’s popular and search with something that’s different and unique,” explained Daniel Ruby, the Research Director for Online Insights at Chitika.

For search engine optimization (SEO), the new data indicates that Yahoo and Ask are still worth optimizing for. Until Bing merges with Yahoo, online companies should focus more on Ask. Bing will be more valuable by then.