Google, Bing, Yahoo – all the major search engines track your search history and build profiles on you, serving different results based on your search history. Try one of these alternative search engines if you’re tired of being tracked.
Google now encrypts your search traffic when you’re logged in, but this only prevents third-parties from snooping on your search traffic – it doesn’t prevent Google from tracking you.
1. DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a popular search engine for the privacy-conscious. As its privacy page says, DuckDuckGo doesn’t log any personally identifiable information. DuckDuckGo doesn’t use cookies to identify you, and it discards user agents and IP addresses from its server logs.
DuckDuckGo doesn’t even attempt to generate an anonymized identifier to tie searches together – DuckDuckGo has no way of knowing whether two searches even came from the same computer. Because DuckDuckGo knows nothing about you, it can’t serve different results to different users. You’ll get the same results as everyone else.
DuckDuckGo’s donttrack.us page explains search engine tracking and DuckDuckGo’s approach in an entertaining way.
2. Startpage
If you prefer Google’s search results and just want more privacy, try Ixquick’s Startpage. Startpage searches Google for you – when you submit a search, Startpage submits the search to Google and returns the results to you. All Google sees is a large amount of searches coming from Startpage’s servers – they can’t tie any searches to you or track your searches.
Startpage discards all personally identifiable information. Startpage doesn’t use cookies, it immediately discards IP addresses, and it doesn’t keep a record of searches performed.
3. Ixquick
Ixquick is the main search engine from the company that runs Startpage. Unlike Startpage, Ixquick pulls results from a variety of sources instead of only Google. Ixquick includes the same privacy features Startpage does, including the Ixquick proxy links in the search results.
4. Blekko
Blekko doesn’t go as far as DuckDuckGo and Ixquick, but it’s still a big improvement over Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Blekko does log personally identifiable information, but deletes it within 48 hours. In contrast, Google stores this information for 9 months – and then anonymizes it without actually deleting it.
You can disable the data collection entirely by enabling the SuperPrivacy setting. Blekko even lets you disable ads entirely.
5. Ask
Ask offers an optional AskEraser feature that you can enable from its Settings page. When you enable this feature, Ask.com will set a single cookie in your browser – indicating that AskEraser is enabled – and delete all other Ask.com cookies. With AskEraser enabled, Ask.com won’t store your search history except in rare circumstances.
Ask.com does clarify that your search history will be stored if a critical error occurs (logging will resume until the problem is solved) or if law enforcement asks Ask.com to log your search activity.
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