Blog Posts


Protect Your Privacy With These Search Engines

 

Posts in other areas:

 

(Spoiler Alert! You won't find G$$gle or Bing on this list.)

Tired of using the 800 pound gorrila in the room? Tired of having your privacy compromised? Tired of not finding what you are looking for? Tired of biased search results?

Then try one or more of the following alternatives:

Privacy-focused

  • Brave Search : Brave may become my default search engine, for a couple of reasons. Right now DuckDuckGo is my primary search engine, but even though it does, in part, use it own web crawler, it also uses a compilation of about 400 other sources, including Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wolfram Alpha, Bing (primary source) and Yandex. That can raise a privacy flag. Also Brave has implemented something it calls "Goggles". "This feature alters the ranking of Brave Search by using a set of instructions (rules and filters). Anyone can create, apply, or extend a Goggle. Essentially Goggles act as a custom re-ranking on top of the Brave search index." This should provide a much shorter list of search results, but I'm hoping one that will be much, MUCH more highly focused on what you are looking for in the first place. Here and here are some pages that should help you get started.
  • Disconnect Search : Not a search engine as much as a browser plugin. "Stop search engines from tracking your searches. Block trackers in websites, apps, and email. Defend yourself from hyper-targeted attacks. Stop surveillance of your online activity. Prevent location and identity tracking. Take back control of your privacy and safety. Disconnect blocks unwanted tracking across your entire device, including browsers, apps, and emails. We also offer the ability to encrypt your traffic to secure it from unwanted surveillance and mask your IP address when you use public Wi-Fi, travel, or want to keep your online activity more private."
  • DuckDuckGo : "Privacy, simplified." Uses Yahoo's search algorithms but is entirely open source and transparent.
  • findx : "A bit more private than other good search engines."
  • Kagi : "No ads, fast and personalised results. The search engine you deserve. When using Kagi Search, you can have peace of mind knowing that we do whatever is possible to keep your private information just that – private." Not free. Memberships can be purchased for $5, $10 or $25/month.
  • MetaGer : "Privacy protected search. Guaranteed Privacy. By using MetaGer you retain full control over your data. Our anonymizing proxy keeps you protected even when you leave our site and continue surfing. We don't track. MetaGer protects against censorship by combining the results of multiple search engines. Our algorithms are transparent and available for everyone to read." (German-based. Uses Scopia and Bing for its search results.)
  • Mojeek : "No tracking - just search. Looking for different results? Value your right to privacy? Trying to escape big tech? Mojeek is a growing independent search engine which does not track you. Independent and unbiased search results." (UK-based)
  • Peekier : "A new way to search the web. The most privacy-oriented search engine."
  • Presearch : "Presearch is a community-powered, decentralized search engine that provides better results while protecting your privacy and rewarding you when you search. We believe the best way to compete with the massive, centralized and monopolistic corporation that currently dominates search is to build a framework that enables people from all over the world to collaborate to build an open and decentralized search engine. In addition to better results, Presearch also protects your privacy because it does not track you or store your searches, and queries are handled by a decentralized network of node servers processing anonymized queries."
  • Qwant : "The search engine that doesn't know anything about you, and that changes everything! Zero tracking of your searches. Zero advertising tracking. Zero sale of your personal data." (French-based)
  • Result Hunter : "Search with Freedom & Truth. Search Freely. Browse Freely. The search engine built to prioritize truth, freedom, and individual rights."
  • Search Encrypt : "Search Encrypt respects and protects the privacy of consumers and is committed to delivering a privacy-safe search environment. When you use Search Encrypt, you trust us with your searches and we understand and value this trust."
  • Searx "is a free and open-source metasearch engine with the aim of protecting the privacy of its users. To this end, Searx does not share users' IP addresses or search history with the search engines from which it gathers results. Tracking cookies served by the search engines are blocked, preventing user-profiling-based results modification. Searx can fetch search results from about 82 different engines. These include major search engines and site-specific searches like Bing, Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and Yandex, though specific search engines can be excluded in one's preferences." Being open-source software, anyone with the desire, time and necessary technical skills can set up their own "instance" of the search engine on a server of their choice. At the time of this writing, there are 70 instances of the Searx search engine hosted in a number of different countries with various levels of privcy protection.
  • Startpage : "Each search on Startpage is truly private. Here's how we keep your search safe and anonymous: Step 1 - Immediate removal of personal data from our servers. Step 2 - Startpage is your protective barrier from Big Tech. Step 3 - Receive unprofiled search results. The first three results are ads related to your search term, but not your search or browsing history. Step 4 - Go beyond private search with Anonymous View private browsing. Step 5 - Search queries are deleted."
  • Swisscows : "Our anonymous search engine does not store your data! Anonymous search engine with our own search index. Swisscows is the European answer to Google & Co. Family friendly, secure and anonymous search engine with own search index."
  • You.com : "Protect your data while you browse the web. A search engine free of tracking and invasive ads. You.com won't remember any of your history or cookies. You.com prevents websites and ads from tracking your browsing. The AI Search Engine You Control. Protect your data while you browse the web. A search engine free of tracking and invasive ads."

Specialty & Other Search Engines

  • Advangle (Beta) : "Advanced web-search in Google and Bing. A simple and convenient builder of complex web-search queries. Our service allows you to quickly build a query with multiple parameters (such as the 'domain', 'language' or 'date published') and immediately see the result of this query in Google or Bing search engines. You can save your queries in Advangle account (reqistration is free) to get back to them later."
  • Andi : The simply named site is equal parts search engine and A.I. assistant. Ask your questions as you would when talking with friends.
  • Blog Surf : "A blog search engine. Blog Surf only indexes personal blogs and newsletters. The vast majority of blogs are a single individual writing. There are no large media publications." You can filter your results by article reading time (less than 5 minutes, 5-10 minutes, or over 10 minutes).
  • BoardReader : "Connecting communities through search." We search online forums and bulletin boards.
  • Dogpile : "InfoSpace created the Dogpile search engine because your time is important to us. Powered by Metasearch technology, Dogpile returns all the best results from leading search engines including Google and Yahoo!, so you find what you're looking for faster."
  • Elephind : "Search the world's historical newspaper archives. Search 200,311,212 items from 3,866,107 newspapers and 4,345 newspaper titles."
  • Freespoke : "Get the full story. Freespoke it. And make up your own mind." Search results from the Left, Right & Center - and it's labeled as such.
  • Heystack : "Discover the best public Google docs created by community members like you."
  • JustWatch US : "With JustWatch you can easily find out where to watch your favorite movies & TV shows in the United States." (free & premium options)
  • Kiddle : "A safe visual search engine for kids. Safe search and kids-oriented results, big thumbnails, large Arial font, privacy."
  • Million Short : "What haven't you found?" You can purposefully remove from your search results anywhere from the top 100 most popular sites to removing the top 100 million sites (or none at all and see what all the other search engines are already showing you). "Million Short's mission is to guide people on the road less traveled by providing alternate methods of organizing, accessing, and discovering the vast web of information that is the Internet." And you can choose search results from specific countries only. Also shown are all the websites removed from the results shown to you (if you chose to exclude any websites). Note: It only worked about 2 out of 5 times for me. For unknown reasons, it failed the other times.
  • NASA Images : Search for NASA images, audio & video. Use with caution. Read their Media Usage Guidelines before use in a project.
  • OCCAMM : "About Our Name. The name OCCAMM is derived from the term Occam's Razor. OCCAMM's goal is to help you cut through the clutter and get you to the results you need in as few steps as possible."
  • Reverse Image Search | Digital Inspiration : "Find visually similar photos on your mobile phone and iPad with Reverse Image Search by Google."
  • Reverse Image Search | Google Images
  • Reverse Image Search | PimEyes : "Face Search Engine. Reverse Image Search. Upload a photo and find out where it is published."
  • Reverse Image Search | TinEye : "Find where images appear online."
  • Reverse Image Search | Yandex : Click the camera icon in the search field. (Country of Origin: Russian)
  • searchcode : "Search 75 billion lines of code from 40 million projects. Simple, comprehensive code search. Helping you find real world examples of functions, APIs and libraries in 243 languages across 10+ public code sources."
  • Similar Site Search : "The Best Place To Find Similar Websites. similarsitesearch.com is a platform for finding relations between a variety of websites. Currently we connected 13,928 items."
  • Studybyte : "Easy Search for Educational Content... When you need reliable information from trusted educational sources." This is completely free and does not track you or collect data, though it does save your previous searches on the computer(s) you use. You can see these in the History tab. Studybyte uses a proprietary search algorithm that ranks only educational content on its results page.
  • Thangs : "is the fastest growing 3D community with over 13,565,660 available models to search, store, and collaborate."
  • WolframAlpha : "Computational intelligence. Compute expert-level answers using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledgebase and AI technology"
  • WorldCat : "Find items in libraries near you - 2 billion items available to you. WorldCat connects you to the collections and services of more than 10,000 libraries worldwide."
  • You.com : "Code Mode. The search engine you control. Search through your favorite sources and use AI to write code, faster. For free. Protect your data while you browse the web. A search engine free of tracking and invasive ads."
  • Zeekly : Doesn't seem to be anything special. Unsure if they are using their own, proprietary seach algorithyms or if it is simply a different interface for one of the "big boys".