All about trending technology news

15 Search Engines with privacy – Google Alternative

When you talk about search engines, we can’t leave without mentioning Google. This article intends to highlight the privacy issues with Google.  Also, I am going to introduce you to the best search engines with privacy that are alternative search engines to Google.

It accounts for 76% and 86% of desktop and mobile search traffic, respectively. Google processes 2 trillion searches a year.  Google can not achieve this without its tremendous search functionality that anyone can offer.

Indisputably Google is the best search engine that brings the best results for your queries and gives you a personalized experience.  However, Google fails miserably in the case of privacy. Google might be the worst search engine when you care about your privacy.

Not only Google, Oher popular search engines like Bing and Yahoo also fall into the same category.  Our searches are logged and stored by search engines.  Google’s privacy policy confirmed all these actions by them. 

Does Google care about privacy?

Google wants to give you customized and results based on user experience.  It argues that without user data it is not possible to provide the rich results what the user expecting.  Google always suggesting you use privacy settings to enable and disable what google can store and what not to store.  This will protect you to some extent but not completely.

Search engine privacy concerns:

Privacy concerns from search engines can come in many forms, such as the ability to log search queries, browsing history, IP addresses, cookies, and user profile in general. Surely search engine privacy is a real concern for every one of us.

If search engines made us identifiable by our searches, our search history would be considered to be personal data.  If so, what the search engines do to save our privacy? Are you bothered about you are being tracked?  That’s why I come up with this article to list the search engines that protect your privacy.

Here I am listing 10 Search engines that do well with privacy.  They do not need to be better than Google and other top search engines.  This article focuses only on the privacy feature of the search engine.

Common features of privacy friendly search engines:

  • Doesn’t save your search histories
  • Personal information is not shared with third-parties
  • Includes a detailed, transparent privacy policy
  • Their advertisements are not targeted at you instead based on the search you do at that session. So there is nothing that could generate a profile of you in any manner – thereby respecting your privacy.
  • does not save your search logs and does not save your IP addresses.  It does not track you either.
  • This search engine stores neither your IP address nor your identity information.  You can also get away from cookies and avoid advertisements and geo-targeting.

Private Search Engines & Google Alternative Search Engines:


1. DuckDuckGo

Google Alternative, privacy search engine

DuckDuckGo is one of the topmost search engines when you are worried about your privacy.  It’s one of the most successful search engines with privacy that makes it a best google alternative. It provided a unique user experience that is commendable. DuckDuckGo collaborates with Yahoo to deliver your searches.

  • Users can enable or disable ads that are delivered by sponsored link, unlike Google.
  • It allows you to filter the results by country.  DuckDuckGo’s algorithm may not match Google’s that’s because it doesn’t know you well.

2. Swisscows

Swisscows.com is one of the efficient google alternative search engine for anyone who wants to have some privacy online. Users at Swisscows don’t leave any track, unlike traditional search engines. Sisscows uses Bing to deliver your searches.

.Features:

  • It offers a built-in filter for stopping violent content in the search engine.
  • Great importance on family-friendly internet content
  • Its interface is an impressive one that stands out from others.  It provides advanced options like music and shopping results, not just simple results. You can play music files from the search itself which is awesome

3. Startpage

It provides un-profiled search results, which means results are not based on your previous searches but only on your search query. Startpage is one of the best search engine if you care about privacy and simplicity.

Features

  • Provides the results in a minimalistic form and you don’t have much to customize. 
  • You can have the option of advance search. 

4. Qwant

qwant, google alternative search engine

Qwant is an alternative search engine for those who care about privacy. This search engine supplements the results from Bing. Enough it does not offer a rich user experience it provides dynamic results in an organized manner.

Features:

  • Ads are generated in collaboration with the Bing ad network
  • Also offers Qwant junior search engine for children
  • Let’s you filter results by categories such as social, images, videos, music, or news

5. SearX

SearX is an open-source platform and anyone can contribute to making it better. It gathers search results from popular search engines and combines them to deliver them to users.

Features

  • Runs on Open-Source and code available on Github
  • meta search engine
  • Removes your identity from your search and it sends requests to search engines such as Google and yahoo as anonymous request

6. Gigablast

It is a completely different search engine compared to others listed here.  It is better to deal with Gigablast if you are concerned about yourself.

Features

  • Runs on Open-Source and code available on Github
  • Provides options for custom results, such as language, timeframe, family filter, etc.

7. Yippy

yippy, search engine alternative

Yippy is a private search engine that maintains the standard of addressing your privacy concern.

Features:

  • Yippy helps you to search for many types of content, including web, images, news, jobs, blogs, government data, etc.
  • Yippy allows you to view cached pages and filter results by tag websites, clouds, and sources.
  • Automatically categorizes query results and It allows you to filter the results category-wise and flag inappropriate results manually.

8. Gibiru

Gibiru search engine provides an anonymous and uncensored search engine technology. It is ideal for someone who doesn’t want to pay for VPN servers.

Features:

  • Gibiru allows you to identify suppressed and censored sites and promotes them to the top.

9. Search Encrypt

The Search Encrypt stands out from others as it encrypts search terms between your computer and searchencrypt.com. This search engine is supported by sponsored ads featured on the results page.

Features:

  • Helps you to intercept & redirect easily
  • The results can be aggregated, encrypted, and sent back to you.
  • Offers advanced Security & Encryption option

10. MetaGer

MetaGer helps you to convert your search request into an anonymous query that can transmit to major search engines.

Features:

  • Another Open Source search engine
  • Allows you to convert your search request into an anonymous query
  • IT integrates with a proxy server that hides your IP address.
  • MetaGer is supported by user contributions.

Disconnect Search is yet another useful private search engine tool that uses content search assistance from major search engines.

Features:

  • Allows you to gets your results from other search engines
  • Displays results in the same style of the search engine they come from.

12. Peekier

Peekier is another privacy-oriented search engine. Even though it is not the fastest, it has some interesting features for applause.  

Features

  • Automatically populate search query with suggestions
  • Displays results in a grid view with preview, that allows you to choose which result you can click and continue

13. Ecosia

Ecosia, search engine with privacy

You will fall in love if you are an environmentalist.  It is one of its kind in the privacy-focused search engine that plants trees if you use it

  • Utilizing Bing’s search result at the core
  • Utilize most of the money generated by sponsor ads for planting trees
  • They are very transparent in their retinue as they disclose it openly
  • claim that their servers run on 100% renewable energy.

14. Mojeek

It is one of the oldest privacy search engines.  Unlike some of them in this category, they are an independent crawler-based search engine with their own algorithm and index of web pages.

If you are looking for privacy while searching you should be good to try it. 


15. Oscobo

It is one of the most effective alternative search engines to major traditional search engines.  It uses encryption to ensure the best safety.

Interestingly, it also offers Oscobo Browser for free that offers an anonymous browsing experience. 

Wrapping Up

I have listed search engines that promising privacy of your searches when compared to major search engines such as Google or Bing. Most of them have the same set of capabilities.  Some provide importance to data security while others consider effective results in the first place.

So, you have seen the most search engines that are Privacy-Friendly and real contenders as Google alternative.  You have to choose any of these if you are concerned about your privacy.  When compared to Google or Bing, they do provide top-class anonymity and data integrity.

It has to be noted that not all search engines have the same set of capabilities to offer. Some do give importance to data safety while some consider effectiveness in the first place. So, you need to choose the most appropriate one as per your need.

Do you know any more interesting search engines with privacy that can be considered as an alternative to Google? Let me know I will add them to this list.

Comments
Top