Why Do Some People Choose Alternative Search Engines Over Google?

When we speak about search engines, we immediately think of Google. But did you know there are many alternative search engines available with just as much to provide?

Google is a recognized search engine worldwide and an industry giant; in fact, even the 2nd largest search engine is Google Images.

Even if it is the most well-known and the biggest, it does not denote it is the only option.

Why Do A Few Folks Pick Alternative Search Engines Over Google?

One of the main causes that folks decide to utilize an alternative search engine instead is for the increased privacy, as Google is recognized for tracking user information both for its own and 3rd-party use.

If you have only ever utilized Google, check out a few of the other search engines, and you may locate something that you like.

Search Engines Other Than Google:

Think of any other search engine other than Google, and there’s a great chance that Yahoo and Bing will be the 1st ones that come to mind. 

Bing provides a more visual approach to search, while the majority of people will recall that Yahoo was once much more powerful than it is today (does anybody remember those Inktomi-powered days)? 

Bing:

There’s no denying that this search engine is lagging behind Google in terms of how many users are using the platform, as it presently holds just under seven percent of the United States search market. 

It provides the same essential features as Google, like knowledge graphs for flights and hotels, conversion calculators, rich snippets, translation, etc. 

But there are also more advanced functions that we’re underestimating. Bing provides a much more visual approach to searching. 

The homepage is dominated by video and imagery, and it also offers advanced functions such as machine-learning predictions for everything, like elections and sports scores.

The image search is much more advanced than that of Google, and it comes with object-detection intelligence within the image search feature. 

You can also save your searches as collections, making it simpler to return to the search at a later time. Bing is the major search engine when it comes to picture searches.

Moreover, it has a few amazing advantages. The Bing Rewards function also rewards users by awarding them credits simply for utilizing their platform for browsing. 

You’ll have to stay signed in to earn points while searching, but you can utilize any device, whether it be desktop, tablet, or mobile.

Yahoo:

Yahoo has been available for even longer than Google, and while a few see it as out-of-date, it is still the 3rd most popular search engine globally. It is even the default search engine for Mozilla Firefox.

One of the amazing things about Yahoo is that it is a lot more than just a search engine. 

Its web portal provides news, email, games, online shopping, and more, providing a well-rounded user experience in a single place.

Its integration with Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Answers, and Flickr denotes that it provides better image results and huge amounts of data on numerous topics.

DuckDuckGo:

It is a well-liked search engine for the ones who value their privacy and are deferred by the thought of their every search being tracked and logged.

It has a clean UI with minimal advertisements and infinite scrolling, so the user experience is streamlined and nice. 

There is zero user tracking, and you can even append DuckDuckGo’s extension to the internet browser to keep the activity private.

The search engine has a really helpful feature known as bangs, which permits you to search directly within another site from DuckDuckGo by entering a prefix. 

For instance, entering !eBay magic the gathering would take you to eBay’s search results directly for the query magic the gathering.

Startpage.com:

Startpage makes a bold claim that it’s the most private search engine in the world. That statement leads to a fair amount of media coverage and a 3rd-party audit by the European Privacy Seal.

Its claims can be backed up by the no-logs policy. The no-logs policy denotes that the search engine has no idea who the users actually are; they don’t save the searchers’ IP address or save tracking cookies.

If you’re simply searching for relevant results with confidence they put privacy first, Startpage.com is the option for you.

Ask:

Once recognized as Ask Jeeves, the simple Q&A format of Ask permits natural-language searches. 

It makes it really easy, particularly for the ones who are less familiar with search engines, like older PC users.

The search results also show FAQs that are related to the search term you are using, which can offer handy resources and assist you in furthering the search.

Qwant:

It claims that they respect your privacy, and it’s another dependable choice for those searching for a true alternative to Google.

Unlike a few of the other privacy-first search engines, it utilizes the indexing engine combined with Bing results to emphasize evading personalizing search results to prevent searchers from getting stuck in the filter bubble. 

As it’s based in Paris, it’s vital to know that European privacy protection laws are usually much stricter than in other places in the world, like the United States. 

Baidu:

It’s the leading search engine in China, with a share of over seventy percent of China’s internet market. Although in Mandarin, it’s extremely similar to Google. 

It looks similar in terms of design, it’s monetized through advertisements, and it utilizes rich snippets in the search results.

However, it’s heavily censored. Certain pictures and even pro-democracy sites are blocked on the search engine.

Swisscows:

It is another European search engine focused greatly on users’ privacy. They promote themselves around 3 core promises that make them an amazing alternative to Google and others:

• They don’t save the data
• They have made an innovative search engine
• They place great significance on family-friendly content

Letting kids surf the web is a concern for a lot of parents, and Swisscows is committed to providing a search engine that’s a safe environment for the entire family to enjoy the web. 

WolframAlpha:

It is a privately owned search engine that permits you to compute expert-level answers utilizing Wolfram’s breakthrough knowledgebase, algorithms, and AI technology.

It is created to provide expert knowledge and is categorized into Science and Technology, Mathematics, Everyday Life, and Society and Culture. 

Within these are numerous subcategories and helpful tools that permit you to research statistics, compute data, and locate expert answers to the questions.

Together with being a hub of expert knowledge, it does not track the searches, providing peace of mind when it comes to privacy.

Search Encrypt:

On its face, it looks pretty much like Google does, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

There’s a clear emphasis on doing one thing: getting the user to search.

However, Search Encrypt’s objective is to protect privacy by detecting searches that might be tracked and tied to your personal data.

It intercepts such searches and redirects them to its privacy-enhanced search engine, which will be set to the default search engine.

Unlike a few of the alternatives here, it does save your history for thirty minutes. 

Boardreader:

It’s a search engine for message boards and forums. It permits you to search forums and then filter down results by language and date.

It is a helpful tool for doing content research as it makes it really simple to locate content written by real users within the topic. 

If you are not familiar with the niche for knowing the top forum to go to, Boardreader can be an amazing place to begin.

OneSearch:

OneSearch, the brand-new search engine from Verizon, flaunts 6 core privacy-focused functions that they’ve developed their search engine around:

• Keyword encryption
• Share links with confidence
• Pure, unfiltered results
• No search history
• No user tracking
• No cookies

And it’s an attractive choice given that the parent company Verizon also owns Yahoo. 

And it’s no secret that Yahoo has come under fire for many privacy blunders and data breaches in the past. 

However, the results are powered by Bing, providing you with a way to return results from a platform you’re already familiar with. 

Another bonus is that you’re enjoying additional layers of privacy.

Yandex:

As the 5th most popular search engine internationally, Yandex is utilized extensively in the native Russia, where it holds about sixty percent of the search engine market share.

It offers a very similar service to Google, and you can search videos, images, sites, and news in an easy layout. 

With additional functions comprising maps, mobile apps, cloud storage, translation, and more, Yandex provides just as much functionality but with a cleaner interface.

Ecosia:

Heavy search engine usage does have an environmental impact on CO2 emissions. That is where Ecosia comes in: the CO2-neutral alternative search engine.

For each search made (powered by Bing), the revenue made goes towards the tree-planting scheme. On average, roughly forty-five searches are required for making a single tree.

SearX:

Providing unbiased results from numerous sources, SearX is the metasearch engine that aims to present a decentralized, free view of the internet.

It is an open-source search engine that’s accessible to everybody for source code review and contributions on GitHub. There is even the choice of customizing it and hosting it on the server as your own search engine.

SearX provides numerous settings and preferences that cannot be located on other search engines, providing amazing usability and precise and fast results.

Disconnect Search:

Disconnect permits you to conduct anonymous searches using a search engine of your preference.

When you type in a search term, the query is rerouted and anonymized using Disconnect’s servers before being passed on to the search engine you chose. It permits you to utilize your favorite search engine without any privacy problems.

Disconnect also provides web browser extensions and applications that permit you to block tracking websites, view advertising requests, load pages faster, and have a lot more privacy-based functions.

Infinity Search:

It is an alternative search engine with a special focus on privacy. 

In fact, it doesn’t store what users search for, and they don’t log any recognizable data about its visitors. 

For accelerating search results, Infinity Search retrieves results from numerous sources and has a sidebar on the results page where you can look for the same thing on numerous other sites.

An amazing thing about this solid alternative is that it is also open-source. It has numerous built-in integrations, like HTML editors and stock charts. 

Something that separates Infinity Search from numerous other search engines is that they’ve got their own indexes and don’t exclusively depend on external sources.

Gigablast:

It’s a private search engine that indexes many sites and servers’ real-time data without tracking the information, keeping you hidden from spammers and marketers.

It is not the most striking search engine available, but it provides various choices for personalizing or filtering the query, including searching by exact phrase, language, and file type.

Together with images, news, and the web, Gigablast also provides a directory and an inclusive advanced search function.

Lukol:

It’s an anonymous search engine that serves search results from Google but has privacy by eliminating any noticeable elements.

It denotes that you can still benefit from Google’s search power without being anxious about being tracked. 

Lukol guarantees the full anonymity of the searches and assists in keeping you safe by protecting you from inappropriate or misleading websites.

In terms of functionality, it is quite a straightforward search engine. You can pick from images, the web, videos, and news for the search, but there are no other choices for filtering search results.

Oscobo:

It is a search engine that protects privacy while you search the internet. By not utilizing any scripts or 3rd-party tools, the information is protected from misuse and hacking.

By encrypting all traffic, it provides anonymous results without any sort of tracking, comprising cookies and IP addresses. 

Oscobo would not send the search term to the website you click on or share personal infarction or search history.

You can search by images, web, maps, and videos for amazing usability. There’s also a Google Chrome extension that permits you to search privately from the Google Chrome bar for simple access for securing queries.

What’s The Top Search Engine For Privacy?

So you desire to search the internet without compromising your privacy? Then you better utilize a private search engine.

But what’s a private search engine?

The private search engine is the one that doesn’t track the users’ information and provides search results with additional levels of data privacy and protection.

The top search engines for privacy are:

• StartPage
• DuckDuckGo

Let’s glance at them a bit closer in terms of protecting privacy:

Best Private Search Engine#1: DuckDuckGo

It comprises a transparent and detailed privacy policy. However, if one hundred percent privacy is the objective, you ought to know that it does store search histories. 

DuckDuckGo claims that it’s non-personal and aggregated information, so the searches cannot be tracked back directly to you.

Best Private Search Engine#2: StartPage

Its privacy policy is to the point and simple: “We do not track you. We do not profile you. Period.” When utilizing this private search engine, metadata (personal data such as the IP address) is removed from the search query. 

This unidentified request is then sent to Google; then, the search results are sent to you through StartPage without revealing any of the private information.

Conclusion:

There are a lot of search engines that you can utilize instead of Google. If your focus is on preserving privacy, then search engines such as Swisscows, StartPage, and DuckDuckGo are appropriate choices.

And if you want to do business in a particular location, then you can try to optimize the website for Yandex and Baidu.

It brings us to the end of this guide. Hopefully, you liked this post on alternative search engines that are better than Google.