Top Google Alternative Search Engines To Protect Privacy In 2020
Google has been the king of search engines around the world yet many people seek alternative search engines other than Google due to many factors including, unbiased search results, speed, reliability, privacy, data protection, and more.
In this article you will come across the popular search engines around the globe other than Google, each provides a set of benefits and features, at the end you would be able to choose a best alternative search engine to protect privacy in 2020.
Before we start thinking about alternative search engines, ask yourself a few questions about what you actually want from a search engine:
- Which is the best search engine besides Google?
- Which search engine is the safest?
- Which is the best search engine in terms of privacy?
- Which search engine is the best?
Check out this curated search engine list, which includes some you may have heard of and some that are new to you:
1. Bing
Microsoft’s Bing is the second largest search engine after Google.
It is easy to use and offers a visual experience with beautiful daily background photos. Bing is ideal for video search as it shows the results as large thumbnails that can be previewed with sound by hovering over them.
Just like Google, Bing is full of internal functions like currency conversion, translation and flight tracking, which makes it a really versatile tool that can hold its own in the global market.
Although you are probably familiar with Bing, you may not know that there is a reward scheme. When you shop or search through Bing, you earn points that can be used to buy apps and movies, which is pretty handy. Be sure to read our detailed guide on Bing Webmaster Tools .
2. DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for those who value their privacy and who are put off by the thought that every request is tracked and logged.
It has a very clean user interface with minimal displays and infinite scrolling, so the usability is nice and rationalized. There is absolutely no user tracking, and you can even add the DuckDuckGo extension to your browser to keep your activity private.
The search engine has a really useful feature called Bangs that lets you search directly on another DuckDuckGo website by entering a prefix. For example, if you enter “! Ebay magic the gathering”, you will be taken directly to eBay’s search results for the query “magic the gathering”.
3. Yahoo!
Yahoo has been around longer than Google, and while some view it as outdated, it is still the third most popular search engine in the world. It is even the default search engine for Firefox.
One of the great things about Yahoo is that it is so much more than just a search engine. Yahoo’s web portal offers email, news, online shopping, games and more, and provides a complete user experience in one place.
By integrating with Flickr, Yahoo Answers and Yahoo Finance, it offers better image results and a lot of information on various topics.
4. Ask
Once known as Ask Jeeves, the simple question-answer format allows of Ask the natural language search. This makes it very user-friendly, especially for those who are less familiar with search engines, such as older computer users.
The search results also display frequently asked questions about your search term, which provide you with useful resources and help you to advance your search.
5. Baidu
Baidu is the leading search engine in China with a share of over 70% in the Chinese Internet market. Although in Mandarin, it is strikingly similar to Google. It looks similar in design, is monetized through ads, and uses rich snippets in search results.
Baidu is heavily censored, however. Certain images and even pro-democratic websites are blocked in the search engine.
6. Wolfram Alpha
WolframAlpha is a private search engine that allows you to “compute expert-level responses using Wolfram’s breakthrough algorithms, knowledge base, and AI technology.”
It was developed to convey expert knowledge and is divided into the categories of mathematics, natural sciences and technology, society and culture as well as everyday life. There are various subcategories and useful tools that you can use to calculate data, research statistics and find expert answers to your questions (you will see an example in a minute).
WolframAlpha is not only a hub for expert knowledge, it also does not track your search queries and offers security in terms of data protection.
7. Board reader
Boardreader is a search engine for forums and message boards . It allows you to search forums and then filter the results by date and language.
It is a useful content research tool as it makes it very easy to find content that has been written by real users within the topic. If you are not familiar with the niche to know the best forum you can visit, board readers can be a good place to start.
8. StartPage
Similar to DuckDuckGo, StartPage was founded with strict user security . It doesn’t track or save any of your data. It also does not target ads based on your browsing behavior.
The homepage claims to be “the most private search engine in the world”. You can get results similar to a completely private Google search.
Startpage is not only a search engine, it also offers a proxy service that allows you to search websites anonymously to improve online security. They even have a custom URL generator so you can surf without the need to set cookies .
All of this is presented in an intelligent, clean user interface that can be set to different themes, including night mode, which offers a super-functional user interface.
9. Ecosia
Heavy use of search engines has an impact on CO2 emissions. This is where Ecosia comes in: the CO2-neutral alternative search engine.
For every search (powered by Bing), the proceeds flow into the tree planting concept. On average, around 45 searches are required to create a single tree.
10. Qwant
Qwant is a data protection-oriented search engine based in France, which does not record your search queries or uses your personal data for advertising purposes.
The user-friendly interface categorizes your search results into web, news and social, and there is even a special music section that AI uses to help you search for lyrics and discover new music.
It uses a quick search feature, where you can type “&” in front of a website name (or a special shortcode) to immediately display external search results. For example, with “& w” or “& wikipedia” you can immediately access results from Wikipedia directly from Qwant.
11. Search Encrypt
Another privacy-based search engine is Search Encrypt , which uses local encryption to ensure that users’ identifiable information cannot be tracked.
As a metasearch engine, Search Encrypt gets its results from a network of search partners and delivers rounded results that are not tailored to your history.
A really interesting feature of this search engine is that it automatically clears your local browsing history after 15 minutes of inactivity. This means that you never have to worry about your privacy, even if someone else has access to your computer.
12. SearX
SearX is a metasearch engine that offers unbiased results from various sources and aims to provide a free, decentralized view of the Internet.
It is an open source search engine that is available for anyone to review the source code and contribute to GitHub . There is even the option to customize it and host it on your server as your own search engine.
SearX offers many preferences and settings that cannot be found in other search engines, and offers excellent usability and fast, precise results.
13. Yandex
As the fifth most popular search engine worldwide, Yandex is used intensively in its home country Russia, where it holds around 60% of the search engine market share.
It offers a very similar service to Google, and you can search websites, images, videos and messages in a user-friendly layout. With additional functions such as mobile applications, maps, translation, cloud storage and more, Yandex offers just as much functionality, but with a clearer interface.
14. Gibiru
Gibirus’ slogan is “Unfiltered private search” and that’s exactly what it offers.
If you download the AnonymoX Firefox add-on, all your searches will be sent via a proxy IP address. This way, you get private and unbiased search results and ensure that other computer users cannot track your history.
Search requests are not stored on Gibiru’s servers and the records are deleted within seconds of performing the search.
15. Disconnect Search
Disconnect enables you to conduct anonymous searches using a search engine of your choice.
If you enter a search term, your request will be redirected and anonymized via the Disconnect servers before it is forwarded to the search engine you selected. So you can use your favorite search engine without privacy issues.
Disconnect also offers browser extensions and applications with which you can block tracking sites, load pages faster , view advertising inquiries and use many other data protection-related functions.
16. Yippy
Yippy is another good choice for privacy, as it neither tracks your search nor shows individual ads. It allows you to browse various types of content, including websites, images , news, jobs, blogs and government data .
Although it doesn’t give you a large amount of results for your query, you can filter the results by a variety of categories, such as source, time, or topic, to give you the most relevant websites.
17. Swisscows
Swisscows offers fully encrypted searches to protect your privacy and security. No personal data, IP addresses or search queries are stored, and the servers are located in Switzerland, which has some of the world’s strictest data protection guidelines.
It is particularly popular with parents who want to offer their children a safe search experience because the built-in filter for pornography and violence cannot be overwritten.
With the help of semantic information recognition, it offers intuitive answers to search queries and data pools in order to generate answers quickly and efficiently. The innovative semantic map shows other relevant or popular queries and helps you to get even more information.
18. Lukol
Lukol is an anonymous search engine that delivers results from Google but protects your privacy by removing all detectable elements.
That means you can still benefit from Google’s search performance without worrying about being followed. Lukol ensures the full anonymity of your searches and helps keep you safe by protecting you from misleading or inappropriate websites.
In terms of functionality, it’s a fairly simple search engine. You can choose from web, images, news, and videos for your search, but there are no options to filter the results.
19. MetaGer
MetaGer offers “Privacy Protected Search & Find” through its anonymized search. They are a nonprofit organization so they have nothing to gain from tracking your searches and they only use green energy, which increases the feeling of trust.
MetaGer is a metasearch engine that queries up to 50 external search engines and gives their results diversity and depth. It doesn’t take the clickthrough rate into account when processing a query, so the results are unfiltered and unbiased. They even offer maps and route planning without tracking your location.
You can also download a plugin that uses MetaGer as the default search engine and homepage to ensure that your searches are always private.
20. Gigablast
Gigablast is a private search engine that indexes millions of websites and servers in real time without tracking your data and keeps you hidden from marketers and spammers .
It’s not the most attractive search engine on the market, but it does offer a variety of options to filter or personalize your query, including searching by language, exact phrase, and file type. In addition to the web, news, and images, Gigablast also offers a directory and a comprehensive advanced search function.
21. Oscobo
Oscobo is a search engine that protects your privacy while you search the Internet. By not using third party tools or scripts, your data is protected from hacking and misuse.
By encrypting all traffic, it delivers anonymous search results without any form of tracking, including IP addresses and cookies. Oscobo does not send the search term to the website you click on, or it shares personal information or search history.
You can search for web, images, videos, and maps to ensure ease of use. There is also a Chrome extension that allows you to search privately in the Chrome bar for easy access to secure queries.
What is the best search engine besides google?
There is no doubt that Google is the largest and arguably the best search engine thanks to its powerful algorithms and AI.
So the decision to surf the Internet without using Google may seem like a strange thing. But being the best search engine comes at a price.
Google is known to personalize your browsing experience at the expense of sharing your personal information and the ability for Google to track you online. For some, this personalization can at least be annoying.
In addition, many of these alternatives have different data protection functions and approaches that we can offer you. So give it a try, you might even get better search results.
What is the best search engine for data protection?
So you want to search the Internet without endangering your privacy? Then better use a private search engine.
But what is a private search engine?
A private search engine is a search engine that does not track its users’ data and provides search results with additional protection and data protection.
The best search engines for data protection are:
- DuckDuckGo
- StartPage
Let’s take a closer look at them to protect your privacy:
Best private search engine # 1: DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo contains a detailed and transparent data protection declaration. However, if 100% privacy is your goal, you should know that it stores search logs. DuckDuckGo claims that it is “non-personal” and aggregated data, so your searches cannot be traced back to you.
You can read DuckDuckGo’s full privacy policy here .
Best private search engine # 2: StartPage
StartPage’s privacy policy is simple and to the point: “We are not following you. We have no profile of you. Dot. “When using this private search engine, metadata (personal information such as your IP address ) is removed from the search. This anonymous search query is then sent to Google, and the results are sent to you via StartPage without revealing your personal data.
You can read StartPage’s full privacy policy here .
Google is the number one search engine. Does that mean it’s the only one you can use? Find out about the best alternatives and what they can offer
Summary
This is just a snapshot of the world of alternative search engines and what they can offer. Whether you’re looking for more privacy, improved usability, or unbiased results, there are plenty of options to choose from. Try a few and see how you get on. You never know, maybe you will find a new favorite. Or at least the sidekick of a Google.
Digital marketing enthusiast and industry professional in Digital technologies, Technology News, Mobile phones, software, gadgets with vast experience in the tech industry, I have a keen interest in technology, News breaking.
There is no such thing as a private search engine. There is a way to search privately.
When the browser is installed and runs on your computer, you cannot have privacy when browsing.
Big Tech can identify your device when you visit a website, using a private search engine just lets them know you tried to hide your search query.