7 Alternative SEARCH ENGINES
1. StartPage StartPage exclusively uses results from Google, so it’s effectively Google without the tracking. StartPage doesn’t record your IP address, and it doesn’t serve tracking cookies.Privacy-oriented users may also take comfort in the fact that StartPage is based in the Netherlands, which is part of the European Union (EU). As a result, it complies with the GDPR—a regulation in the EU that protects users’ data.
2. Qwant Its search results are powered by Bing and supplemented by those collected from its own web crawler. Qwant does not collect any data or use tracking cookies. It also dissociates your query and IP address for further anonymity. Like StartPage, Qwant is based in the EU and therefore offers GDPR protection. France is, however, part of the Nine Eyes intelligence alliance.
3. DuckDuckGo DuckDuckGo sources its results from over 400 different places, including its own crawler (DuckDuckBot), crowdsourced sites (e.g., Wikipedia), and partners (e.g., Bing). According to DuckDuckGo, it does not store personally identifiable information like IP addresses. It also doesn’t use tracking cookies. However, it does save searches, though claims to do it in a non-identifiable way.
4. Ecosia The company behind Ecosia wants to counteract this. It donates 80% of its profits to tree-planting projects, which roughly equates to one tree planted for every 50 searches. It’s also built a solar plant so it can run servers on clean power. Ecosia claims to be a private search engine. However, if you read their privacy policy, you’ll find that they’re not that privacy-oriented.
5. Swisscows Swisscows bills itself as “familyfriendly.” It automatically filters out all violent and pornographic search results. This feature is enforced. There’s no way to change it in the settings. Swisscows does not collect any data about its users. It doesn’t use any tracking cookies or geo-targeting. If you’re concerned about the partnership with Bing, you will be relieved to know it routes queries through a firewall to strip out personal identifiers.
6. Bing If you’re looking for a search engine with similar features to Google, Bing is likely your best bet. Familiar features like translation, currency conversions, time, knowledge panels are all available. while it is the closest alternative to Google, there isn’t much upside to using Bing. Bing is not a privacy-focused search engine. Microsoft collects data from all of your interactions with their products.
7. Yahoo Its once popular search engine is today powered by Bing. Surprisingly though, it’s still the third most popular web search engine in the world, owning 1.6% of the global market share. Yahoo’s search results are decent, but the UI leaves a lot to be desired. It’s effectively Bing, but worse. Yahoo is not a privacy-focused search engine. The company collects personal information when you register and use any of its products or services.