Alternative Search Engines
Stop giving Google all your data! Try these instead
DuckDuckGo is an alternative search engine that has rich features, respects your privacy, and is built from free/open-source software.
• Zero-click Info - Useful information above the links. • More Privacy - We do not track you. • Goodies - Instant answers, !bangs & settings. • Less Spam - We remove sites with just ads.
Why did we create Startpage.com?
As kids, we’re all taught not to touch stuff that doesn’t belong to us. It’s a good guideline. So why are online companies harvesting our personal data without our consent? They shouldn’t. That’s why we’re developing online tools that help you stay in control of your personal information. Search is done. Expect other private versions of common digital services soon. Why? Because it’s our belief that personal data should be your data, not Big Data. Period.
How we made search private
You can’t beat Google when it comes to online search. So we’re paying them to use their brilliant search results in order to remove all trackers and logs. The result: The world’s best and most private search engine. Only now you can search without ads following you around, recommending products you’ve already bought. And no more data mining by companies with dubious intentions. We want you to dance like nobody’s watching and search like nobody’s watching.
No personal data storage
We don’t collect or share your personal information. Ever. There’s literally no data about you on our servers. None. We can’t profile you, and we can’t be forced to hand over your data to authorities, simply because we don’t have any data to hand over.
Anonymous View
Clicking search results means leaving the protection of Startpage.com. This could lead to a barrage of cookies being installed on your device. That’s why we developed the "Anonymous View" feature. With "Anonymous View" you can visit search results in full privacy, and keep on browsing: They’ll never know you were there. You’ll find the feature next to every search result.
No filter bubble
Other search engines use your search habits to serve you results they think you want, essentially trapping you in an echo chamber of results. With Startpage.com, you break through the filter bubble to see a wider variety of results.
Searx is a free internet metasearch engine which aggregates results from more than 70 search services. Users are neither tracked nor profiled. Additionally, searx can be used over Tor for online anonymity.
Why use Searx?
- Searx may not offer you as personalised results as Google, but it doesn't generate a profile about you
- Searx doesn't care about what you search for, never shares anything with a third party, and it can't be used to compromise you
- Searx is free software, the code is 100% open and you can help to make it better. See more on GitHub
If you do care about privacy, want to be a conscious user, or otherwise believe in digital freedom, make Searx your default search engine or run it on your own server
Technical details - How does it work?
Searx is a metasearch engine, inspired by the seeks project. It provides basic privacy by mixing your queries with searches on other platforms without storing search data. Queries are made using a POST request on every browser (except chrome*). Therefore they show up in neither our logs, nor your URL history. In case of Chrome* users there is an exception, Searx uses the search bar to perform GET requests. Searx can be added to your browser's search bar; moreover, it can be set as the default search engine.
Get Google search results, but without any ads, javascript, AMP links, cookies, or IP address tracking. Easily deployable in one click as a Docker app, and customizable with a single config file. Quick and simple to implement as a primary search engine replacement on both desktop and mobile.
Features
No ads or sponsored content No JavaScript No cookies No tracking/linking of your personal IP address No AMP links No URL tracking tags (i.e. utm=%s) No referrer header Tor and HTTP/SOCKS proxy support Autocomplete/search suggestions POST request search and suggestion queries (when possible) View images at full res without site redirect (currently mobile only) Light/Dark/System theme modes (with support for custom CSS theming) Randomly generated User Agent Easy to install/deploy DDG-style bang (i.e. !<tag> <query>) searches Optional location-based searching (i.e. results near <city>) Optional NoJS mode to view search results in a separate window with JavaScript blocked
You can check the Public Instances at https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search#public-instances
Swisscows is the data-safe search engine and the absolute alternative to Google. Swisscows does not monitor and does not store any data. In addition, Swisscows is family-friendly and child-friendly, unlike Startpage and Duckduckgo. Swisscows does not provide any results with pornographic content.
MetaGer is an open source metasearch engine focused on protecting users' privacy. Based in Germany, and hosted as a cooperation between the German NGO 'SUMA-EV - Association for Free Access to Knowledge' and the University of Hannover, the system is built on 24 small-scale web crawlers under MetaGer's own control. In September 2013, MetaGer launched MetaGer.net, an English-language version of their search engine.
Features: • Libre Source (Open Source). If you are not familiar with "Libre Source", it means this software has both stronger security & stronger privacy. Because its code is publicly available for review and contributions on GitLab at https://gitlab.metager.de/open-source/MetaGer • Attractive GNU General Public version 3 & MIT licenses. This means the software code is owned and supported by a friendly not-for-profit community. Instead of a for-profit corporation. • No censorship by combining the results of multiple search engines • Algorithms are transparent and available for everyone to read • Run by a Nonprofit Organization • Powered by 100% renewable energy • Optional, dark theme
Yandex is the fastest growing search engine in the world, serving primarily Russian users. It has been experimenting with an English-based search engine, but its main operations are for its Cyrillic engine.
Yandex.Search is available online and on mobile devices. You can see what devices are supported at this link: http://tinyurl.com/yandexsearchmobile
Supported languages: Russian, English, Ukrainian and Turkish.
YaCy is a free search engine that anyone can use to build a search portal for their intranet or to help search the public internet. When contributing to the world-wide peer network, the scale of YaCy is limited only by the number of users in the world and can index billions of web pages. It is fully decentralized, all users of the search engine network are equal, the network does not store user search requests and it is not possible for anyone to censor the content of the shared index.
