Top 3 Best Private Search Engine Alternatives

Private search engines have seen huge growth over the past few years. Until recently, it was unthinkable that anyone could compete with Google in the search realm. However, there are now many smaller players in the search game that are growing rapidly. Google’s market share has declined from 78.7 percent in February 2017 to slightly below 70 percent in February 2018.

A few of these search engines, including DuckDuckGo and StartPage began as normal search engines with no privacy enhancements. However, after they realized the massive risk associated with storing so much data, they decided to take a different approach.

Your privacy really matters, and these search engines can help you stay private online:

1. Search Encrypt

This private search engine uses local encryption to secure your searches. It combines AES-256 encryption with Secure Sockets Layer encryption. Search Encrypt then retrieves your search results from its network of search partners. After you’re done searching, your search terms expire so they are private even if someone else has access to your computer.

Search Encrypt recently added more new features, including privacy-friendly videos, news and maps search. Its videos search lets you watch videos directly on the search engine with additional privacy protection, and without pre-roll ads. This search engine’s encryption and perfect forward secrecy actually give it better privacy by default than DuckDuckGo.

2. StartPage

StartPage uses results from Google, which is a good thing if you prefer Google’s result without the tracking. Ixquick, which is an independent search engine that uses its own results, developed StartPage to include results from Google. Its features include a proxy service, URL generator, and HTTPS support. The URL generator is a unique feature that eliminates the need for cookies. It remembers your settings in a privacy-friendly way.

StartPage is used across the globe, however, it receives a big portion of its visitors from Germany.

3. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is probably the most well-known alternative search engine. Its CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, said, “if the FBI comes to us, we have nothing to tie back to you.” Searches are sourced mostly from Yahoo. One cool feature of DuckDuckGo is what it calls “bangs”. Users can directly search other sites, like Amazon, Wikipedia, Yelp or Youtube, by starting their query with an exclamation mark!

DuckDuckGo recently added a new extension to their product line. It goes beyond keeping your searches private, and grades websites you visit on their privacy.

Why Do Private Search Engines Matter?

We often hear about internet service providers (ISPs) or the NSA intrusions into citizens’ privacy, but what are we doing about it?

There is an inherent risk in sharing your information with third-parties while browsing the internet. That’s why private search engines are beneficial to users. There is a very little risk that your searches will be leaked to anyone because most private search engines don’t track any information that can link you to your search terms. Beyond that, by searching in private, you aren’t creating filter bubbles that isolate you from any results that may conflict with your beliefs.

It’s better to be safe than sorry when it comes to protecting your information from the websites you visit and the search engines you use. With sites like Facebook and Google drastically improving their tracking capabilities, your data is becoming more spread out across the web.

Source

https://hackernoon.com/untraceable-search-engines-alternatives-to-google-811b09d5a873