With over 1.6 billion webpages, the Internet is home to more information than you can think of, making it harder to find information relevant to your search. This is where search engines come in handy. They help you find the information you need like a needle in a haystack at lightning-fast speeds.
When it comes to searching for information on the Internet, no one comes close to Google. With its web crawlers looking for new pages and indexing them in its database every second. Google makes finding information child’s’ play. Using a constantly changing algorithm, it brings users the best content available on the Internet.
Although Google offers great services, it collects a lot of information to provide, which doesn’t sit well with users concerned about their privacy online. If you want to escape the pangs of surveillance, you can use a privacy centred search engine.
Creating a search engine in its entirety is impossible. Due to this reason, most search engine alternatives are meta-search engines. They use popular search engines like Google, Bing and Yandex to look for keywords. Stripping all user tracking information before looking for information meta-search engines add a layer of privacy to your searches
So to keep your search history private we have curated a list of the seven best alternatives to Google that are also privacy-centred.
Also read: How does public-key encryption work? Does it make the internet safer?
Startpage
Startpage is a metasearch engine, which uses Google as the main search. Due to this reason, the search results from this engine are very close to the results Google shows. Acting as a proxy between Google and the user it strips tracking information and sends the search query to Google providing users with the privacy they need
It also offers an anonymous view feature, which prevents websites from placing tracking cookies on your system and protects you from website fingerprinting.
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Duckduckgo
Duckduckgo is one of the most popular privacy centered search engines out there. It uses four hundred sources to find the information you need. Not only does it have its own web crawler, called the Duckduckbot, which helps provide users with a great mix of search results.
It clearly states in its privacy policy that the information you search for is never collected and is not shared with any of the partners as well. In terms of aesthetics, it offers a dark mode which every user loves. The bangs feature on DuckDuckGo helps users to search for content from specific websites.
Swisscows
Swisscows is a search engine service based out of Switzerland. It respects user privacy and is a family-friendly search engine. It removes violent and pornographic content from its search results making it a great search engine for children.
When it comes to privacy Swisscows does not connect any user data like cookies of search histories. It has its own index for German searches but uses Bing for other languages. When it uses Bing it strips all the tracking information and provides users privacy.
In terms of features, it offers semantic maps which help users refine their search with different keywords. It also offers a digest feature, which provides the gist of any document.
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Qwant
Qwant is a Paris-based search engine. Being a part of EU, it adheres to the privacy guidelines of the GDPR. Qwant has its own web crawlers and indexes to provide search results but also uses Bing to provide better search results. It has also partnered with Microsoft to provide faster and better search results while keeping user privacy in mind.
Qwant offers its own music search engine, which is great for music fanatics
Searx
Searx is an open-source meta search engine. Its source code is available on Github and people can host their version of Searx on their own servers. It respects user privacy and does not collect any user information.
It uses popular search engines like Yandex, Google and Duckduckgo to find information and offers a good variety of search results.
Also read: 6 great Gmail features you might have missed
Ecosia
If you want to do some good while looking for things on the internet, Ecosia is the search engine for you. It plants trees around the world from the revenue they make from the search engine. Ecosia is also privacy centred and does not track user information.
With its servers running on renewable sources of energy its has a very low carbon footprint.
Metager
Metager is a metasearch engine, which uses 50 different sources to find what you are searching It uses hidden Tor nodes to provide users privacy when they look for data on the internet. In addition to this Metager has its own web crawlers and provides a good variety in its search results.
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