What is the best search engine?

"Best" is somewhat defined by your particular task; what may be "best" for one type of search, may not be quite the best for another.

For simple Keyword type searches, Google, Bing, and Yahoo are probably the most used sites.

If you want a direct answer, rather than a list of web sites, try WolframAlpha.com; while it excels at computational type questions it can also offer statistics on things like foreign exchange, demographics, and even nutritional information.

Lots of people have become aware of the tracking that sites like Google do, and are disturbed that all their search history is stored and used to shape their search results; some people believe this can cause a "search bubble" in which one is only given results that are likely to match their past interests instead of allowing them to see everything that's available to them.

One plucky newish (3-4 years old) alternative search engine is DuckDuckGo, which claims to do absolutely no tracking of you across the web.