What Is The Safest Search Engine? What Are Some Of The Best Private Search Engines?
Have you ever looked up something unimportant just to be bombarded with advertisements for it anywhere else you go online?
That can be an issue with big-name search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and Google because they utilize various trackers, coding, and activity logging for gathering personal data about users.
This information is then utilized by those search engines and 3rd-party businesses for analyzing user behavior and launching targeted personalized content and advertising campaigns.
In a few cases, being served personalized data can be helpful. But for a lot of people, the idea of big companies selling off your personal information can feel like a breach of privacy and a risk to personal safety online.
Thankfully, there are methods for users to search the web without being tracked, like using private search engines or VPNs (virtual private networks).
Here’s a list of the top private search engines you can utilize without being followed:
What Is A Private Search Engine?
These are programs utilized for browsing the internet that doesn’t save search or user data. These search engines are typically utilized for maintaining user privacy.
User data comprises a variety of information that can be utilized to identify who a user is. Some of that data comprises:
- Location information
- Browser fingerprints
- Search terms
- Unique identifiers, which can be located in cookies
- User agents
- IP addresses
There are numerous private search engines accessible that are utilized across the globe.
However, it’s significant to comprehend that each search engine provides a diverse level of privacy based on how the business makes revenue.
Types Of Private Search Engines:
Here are the common private search engine types:
Anonymous Search Engines:
These are very anonymous search engines. They do not gather or depend on user information for research, but they might contain advertisements.
While such web browsers are anonymous, clicking on the advertisements can compromise privacy.
Paid Private Search Engines:
Although the majority of search engines make money through ads and then selling user information, others make cash using subscriptions.
Once you purchase a subscription, such search engines will provide you with the utmost protection and privacy. However, they might require you to give basic data for accessing their services.
Why Should You Utilize One?
Unlike the more common search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, or Google, private search engines are preferred by a lot of users because they do not collect user or search data. This data can be utilized for the following:
- Enhancing personalization on online services
- Informing targeted advertising campaigns
- Analyzing user behavior
- Tracking users online
While the majority of this data might be utilized by site developers or advertisers in benign advertising campaigns or program development, it can also be gathered and utilized against you by diverse cybercriminals or malware.
And although a lot of regular search engines need users to opt in to sharing personally identifiable data to stay compliant with GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) laws and regulations, a lot of users prefer to evade risking privacy altogether by just utilizing private search engine choices.
Top Private Search Engines:
From saving search query history to collecting personally identifiable data, users have the right to use the internet privately.
Here are a few of the best private search engines to assist you in browsing undetected.
DuckDuckGo:
If you have ever searched for a private search engine, you have perhaps encountered DuckDuckGo. This search engine is a well-liked option, and it serves across ten million searches a day.
Its results are made from over four hundred sources comprising Bing, Wikipedia, Yahoo, and Yandex.
DuckDuckGo provides additional features like! bang, which permits users to search other sites like Yahoo, Wikipedia, or Amazon directly.
Just enter an exclamation mark in front of the query. You can also install the DuckDuckGo extension on Google Chrome and see how private the sites you go to really are.
Sounds like the ideal private browser? Well…not quite. In 2022, news broke that DuckDuckGo had given MS permission to trace users through certain platforms, comprising Bing and LinkedIn.
It’s apparently an inevitable stipulation of a deal DuckDuckGo has with MS, which facilitates a few of their marketing infrastructure.
According to a statement by DuckDuckGo, such trackers can’t be tied to a particular user profile, denoting that their privacy claims are still technically precise.
However, it is the lack of transparency that has troubled me a lot. For a business that places a lot of emphasis on personal privacy, the data ought to really have been made public sooner.
Startpage:
It’s a Netherlands-based, award-winning private search engine that specializes in blocking 3rd parties from collecting personal information or setting cost trackers.
Users’ personal information like network settings, IP addresses, locations, browsers, or hardware are removed by the business’s two levels of on-premise, managed servers, resulting in unpersonalized results.
The anonymous view of the engine permits users to decide when to browse without being tracked and can block retargeting and targeted advertisements when switched on.
The engine is available as a Chrome extension, and the business makes money through contextual, paid advertising.
Swisscows:
It’s a well-liked search engine based in Switzerland that utilizes innovative technologies to offer information and data integrity.
For instance, it establishes the search results on semantic data and data recognition.
The web browser is not interested in your information, so the searches will not accumulate in the search history. Furthermore, it does not save user information and assures you complete anonymity.
Also, the Swisscows web browser is family-friendly, as the children can look for whatever they desire online safely and privately.
For instance, it would not index or display sexual and pornographic search results.
Also, the servers of Swisscows are placed in a highly secured information center in Switzerland. Moreover, the company utilizes intelligent information cloud technology that offers prompt search results from a big data pool.
StartPage:
This Netherlands-based search engine is perhaps the top alternative to Google. It does not utilize Google search results without logging any user information, nor does it share anything with 3rd parties.
StartPage provides an advanced filtering option that you can utilize for looking up videos and images. It is also accessible as a Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome extension.
If you cannot utilize a VPN, search engines like this one are an awesome alternative. StartPage provides three unique features that separate it from its competitors:
- Proxy server that hides the IP address and the location, so the web browsing is truly private
- URL generator that removes the need for cookies
- HTTPS support that gives you results just from trusted sites
Qwant:
It’s a complete privacy-prioritizing search engine that takes pride in not selling its personal data to advertisers or recording the user’s search queries.
Originating in France, it’s graced with a user-friendly and clean user interface.
The engine categorizes the search results into three main categories, mainly web, social, and news. It also utilizes AI to offer users a dedicated music section that exists only to assist music lovers in finding new lyrics and songs.
Scrolling below the search bar will show you a section reserved for hot trends. Here you have quick access to current events happening in the world. There’s also a Qwant Junior division dedicated to catering to kids.
MetaGer:
It’s the total opposite of Swisscows while being similar in service. They’re both search engines that prioritize the privacy of users.
However, while Swisscows blocks certain unsuitable content, MetaGer relishes being the provider of the uncensored, unabashed search engine.
MetaGer has a web browser extension and can be utilized as your own default search engine.
You can search for anything using MetaGer and get quick access to it. They’re a non-profit organization and stand to achieve nothing by selling private information.
It offers unbiased and unfiltered search results as it ignores click-through rates. MetaGer also permits you to access maps and plan the routes without tracing the location.
Searx:
It’s a privacy-focused and free metasearch engine. It does not share users’ search history and IP addresses with the search engines it utilizes.
It also blocks cookies and protects against tracking pixels, HTTPS headers, and malicious scripts.
Furthermore, it stops search result filtering according to the search habits, so it’s really handy if you desire to minimize 3rd-party tracking.
Searx does not utilize tracked redirect links that Google utilizes. Also, by utilizing proxied and cached links, it permits you to see sites without visiting them. Through this, you can avoid accidentally coming across malicious sites.
Yippy.com:
Yippy permits you to manually filter the search results according to numerous categories and mark any search result as unsuitable.
Unlike other search engines, with Yippy.com, you can search the content of an extremely diverse nature, like news, web, government data, images, blogs, jobs, etc.
It neither records the searches nor shows custom advertisements. (That’s the reason why it’s on this list). However, similarly to Google (in a good manner), it does permit users to see the cached pages.
Mojeek:
Mojeek is an alternative, independent search engine that values users’ rights to confidentiality and puts them first.
Indexing over five billion pages with owned crawlers, the engine offers unbiased and independent search results in 4 categories, comprising the emotion-based category.
The internet browser is also available through a smartphone application.
With a business value of doing what is right, Mojeek is committed to sustainability, working from the United Kingdom’s award-winning greenest data center.
Disconnect Search:
It acts as a bridge between users and search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo.
It offers a secure search experience by getting results from 3rd-party search engines but showing them in a more secure way.
So you can safely search the Internet under the additional cloud of anonymity. There’s no tracking of the information or sharing of the information with advertisers.
The engine is also very basic, with no pointless filters and setting choices.
Disconnect Search also has a web browser extension that permits you to block tracking websites and load pages more quickly.
Are Private Search Engines Really Private?
The search engine’s privacy relies on the business model. The non-private search engines make money from sharing information with 3rd-parties and by utilizing advertisement targeting.
Private search engines don’t track you and collect the information. They offer you more objective search results unaffected by their advertising strategies and minimize the digital footprint.
Considerations When Selecting A Private Search Engine:
Here are a few things to contemplate when searching for the top search engine for privacy:
Search Results:
A few search engines might do well in the privacy category, but they do not return really good search results. A few will actively undertake censorship or show censored search results from Bing or Google.
Jurisdiction:
It’s a significant factor to contemplate because it ultimately affects information and privacy.
Services based in the United States, for instance, are subject to the National Security Letters and Patriot Act and might also be forced to gather user information without being permitted to disclose anything (because of gag orders).
Privacy:
Contemplate what data the search engine is logging and the information that might be passed off to 3rd parties and search partners (like Bing).
Mobile Applications:
More than a year ago, Google stated that they process more requests from mobile devices than they actually do from desktops.
We live on mobile devices, so the search engine that provides a mobile application for the specific device can be a huge advantage.
Features:
A few private search engines provide helpful features, like anonymous viewing (through proxy servers), search result filtering choices, extensions, plugins, and more.
Trust:
Trust is hard to measure and quantify, but it is a really significant consideration. When contemplating the trust factor, you might desire to glance at the history of the business and the people behind it.
Locating the top search engine for the requirements is a subjective procedure, and there is no single top private search engine that applies to everybody.
How Do Private Search Engines Make Revenue?
Private search engines make revenue in three ways: donations, affiliates, and contextual ads. Let’s examine each of the money streams on their own:
Contextual Ads:
Just like with Bing and Google, a lot of private search engines make revenue by placing ads in the search results, frequently based on the search terms you typed in.
The disparity between private search engines and Bing or Google is that private search engines ought just to be serving advertisements based on the search term rather than from all other information collection sources (browsing, email, etc.).
Note: a few private search engines pass an anonymized (truncated) version of the IP address to the search partner for serving relevant advertisements for the general location.
Donations:
Private search engines might also make cash from donations. Anyone can donate to this project, regardless of whether it’s the individual creator, a non-profit organization, or a private for-profit business.
If the search engine doesn’t have other revenue sources or good marketing deals with partners, donations become really significant to guarantee continued operations. For instance, MetaGer and Swisscows all have donation choices.
Affiliate Revenue:
A lot of private search engines make cash using affiliate programs. DuckDuckGo is an example of that; they’re a member of both the eBay and Amazon affiliate programs:
DuckDuckGo is a part of the affiliate programs of the e-commerce sites eBay and Amazon. When you go to such websites using DuckDuckGo, comprising when utilizing! bangs, and then make a purchase, we get a small commission.
You might also see online shopping choices above the search results, which are another form of affiliate income. Both DuckDuckGo and Qwant utilize affiliate shopping search results as sources of revenue.
Note: When you purchase something using the affiliate link, it never increases the cost you disburse. Rather, it just transfers a small profits percentage (i.e., a commission) to the affiliate, which in this situation is the private search engine.
Conclusion:
At a time when information breaches have tanked businesses and destroyed lives, the demand for privacy is at a record high.
The Internet is a blessing that can actually become a curse immediately if malicious online characters get access to the web browsing information.
As well-liked search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, and Google fail at that, we have to turn to other search engines that do value the user’s privacy.
All the above-stated tools do just that while being simple to utilize and offering suitable search results.
You can search anonymously, knowing the search queries are not being tracked or logged by the search engine.
As for our recommendation, if you’re searching for a search engine that has already gathered a decent amount of trustworthy user base, then choose DuckDuckGo.
For a more customized experience with additional advantages of private Internet surfing, Startpage is recommended.
