What is the best alternative to Google search?

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score 79 · Accepted Answer

DuckDuckGo

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Top Pro

Very protective of user privacy

DuckDuckGo does not collect or share any personal information. Their privacy page has a great rundown on why privacy is important. The most important repercussion of this is that DDG doesn't use the data collected to tailor results, avoiding exposure to the "Filter Bubble". See More

Top Con

No date information in search results

In search results, there are no dates when the pages were published, which doesn't allow you to immediately know if the page is outdated. See More

Peter J. Mello's Experience

DuckDuckGo is an amazing resource that gets far too little credit for producing such useful results without mining your data, proving wrong the contention by all other major search engines that it is the only viable business model available to them. See More

Top Pro

Has a wide spectrum of instant answers

For select queries DDG pops up a box that supplies the exact answer. For example, searching "stopwatch" will pop up a stopwatch, asking for "words like..." will show a list of related words, typing "password" will generate a password, etc. See More

Top Con

Time limit only a month

You can only limit the date of the search result up to a month old. Many need a year or a more flexible solution. See More

Francisco's Experience

DuckDuckGo is a great alternative to Google. I love that it values user privacy and offers great functionality. Granted, sometimes Google gives out better results, but for the vast majority of queries, DDG is virtually as good as Google. See More

Top Pro

Allows searching from specific sites using bangs

Bangs are commands that allow searching via a different website's local search engine, using keywords or abbreviations with an exclamation mark (!). For example searching "world war ii !wiki" will automatically redirect to Wikipedia.org and show results for the query "world war ii" there, instead of DuckDuckGo, using Wikipedia's search engine. The more common sites have shortened alternatives for these commands. Such as !g for Google, !i for images and !yt Youtube. The whole list of bangs can be found by typing "!bang" in DuckDuckGo. See More

Top Con

Based in US, so they cannot guarantee there is no backdoor

Top Pro

Infinite scroll of search results

DuckDuckGo results page is an infinite scrolling page, so you don't need to be clicking through pages. See More

Top Con

Shows too few images

When searching for images only, it shows too few of them and only a handful are related to the search terms. See More

Top Pro

Ads are non-obstructive and don't track you

The ads are clearly labelled as ads and are non-obstructive. The ads are based on the searched keywords and there's no tracking involved on their visibility. You just need to remember that the site the ad links to might track you. See More

Top Con

Doesn't do personalized searches

Since they don't track you the results are not tailored to your interests. See More

Top Pro

Many customization options for appearance

DDG allows customizing almost any aspect of the search engine's appearance including fonts, page width, alignment, header behavior, site icons, etc and has a selection of premade themes available as well. See More

Top Con

Form over function (overall search experience is poor)

It's nice to adjust the settings and all but after a couple of days you will want to go back to a more functional search engine. Sure DDG looks shiny and !bangs are great but many wouldn't consider it as a viable alternative. Better results for search queries is more important than fancy looking CSS. See More

Top Pro

Can disable advertisements

The search engine allows freely disabling ads. See More

Top Con

Search using language other than English is not so great

Korean would never use it. See More

Top Pro

Pulls information from multiple search engines

DDG searches through not only its own database but pulls search results from multiple other search engines, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc for a total of 30+ search engines as well. See More

Top Con

Bangs do not protect user privacy and can be misleading

Top Pro

Has a .onion site

Only accessible from Tor. See More

Top Pro

Can function without JavaScript

Of course, it's nicer when enabled, but it's not required. Some browsers are too limited (mobile, terminal) or turn it off for security reasons (tor, etc.), and DDG still works. See More

Top Pro

Good for Linux users

DuckDuckGo has an API with some websites. With the help of this API, if you search for a fix of a problem in Linux, you can easily find an answer to the problem. For example, if you search for "How to update linux", you will get a message like this: How to install updates via command line Try this: sudo apt-get update # Fetches the list of available updates sudo apt-get upgrade # Strictly upgrades the current packages sudo apt-get dist-upgrade # Installs updates (new ones) --SirCharlo See More

See All

The Best 1 of 23 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for DuckDuckGo

My Recommendation for DuckDuckGo

Very protective of user privacy

No date information in search results

Has a wide spectrum of instant answers

Time limit only a month

Allows searching from specific sites using bangs

Based in US, so they cannot guarantee there is no backdoor

Infinite scroll of search results

Shows too few images

Ads are non-obstructive and don't track you

Doesn't do personalized searches

Many customization options for appearance

Form over function (overall search experience is poor)

Can disable advertisements

Search using language other than English is not so great

Pulls information from multiple search engines

Bangs do not protect user privacy and can be misleading

Has a .onion site

Can function without JavaScript

Good for Linux users

22 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for searx

My Recommendation for searx

Self hosted

Very customizable

Privacy focused

Free software

My Recommendation for StartPage

My Recommendation for StartPage

Privacy focused

Pulls results from two search engines

Recommended for its no-logging privacy

Filter by time like Google

Based in Netherlands (Europe)

Offers a free proxy with every search results

My Recommendation for Yandex

My Recommendation for Yandex

Good search

No repeated ads

Very lightweight and fast

Minimalistic and beautiful

My Recommendation for Presearch.org

My Recommendation for Presearch.org

Rewards

Requires to login to use it

Community driven

Portal vs. Engine

Customization

Easy working and customer friendly

My Recommendation for Search Encrypt

My Recommendation for Search Encrypt

No creepy ads around the web

Lack of features

No tracking

Perfect forward secrecy

Expiring search history

My Recommendation for Qwant

My Recommendation for Qwant

Ad free/Merchant independent

Filter by time restricted to max. one month

No user tracking

No filter bubble

My Recommendation for All-in-one Internet Search

My Recommendation for All-in-one Internet Search

My Recommendation for AIOIS

My Recommendation for AIOIS

My Recommendation for YaCy

My Recommendation for YaCy

Difficult to censor

Free / libre software

My Recommendation for ChaCha

My Recommendation for ChaCha

Account required to post a new question online

My Recommendation for dogpile

My Recommendation for dogpile

Half of the page is ads

Shows content from all major search engines

My Recommendation for Bing