What is the best alternative to Google search?

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score 104 · 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

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

A's Experience

As soon as Firefox allowed users to make DuckDuckGo their default search engine, I did it. In a time when everything seems to track what you do online, then share the info without permission, DDG is an oasis of privacy. While DuckDuckGo isn't a perfect search engine, I still prefer it's privacy policy to Google's. See More

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

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results, there are no dates when the pages were published, which doesn't allow you to immediately know if the page is outdated.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

Parker's Experience

I've used DDG (DuckDuckGo) as my primary search engine for a few years now. It's increasingly rare for me to need Google instead, mostly just when I need to search within a specific time frame. While DDG isn't perfectly secure, and other users might miss certain features (like Google Translate and better non-English language functionality) more than I do, I'm happy not to feed the ravenous data-mining monster that Google has become as much as I used to. 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

Horrible search results

They store no information about you (theoretically a pro) but this results in absolutely awful search results, and having to modify your search terms 4-5 times to get what you are looking for. See More

rosalindmorris23's Experience

Privacy, nuff sad. See More

Top Pro

Has a .onion site

Only accessible from Tor. See More

Top Con

DuckDuckGo has no 3rd party certifications

GraciousBanaitja's Experience

they are pretty much just using bing results underneath 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

Owner would compromise his service/customer privacy

In a question to Weinberg, “if you were served an NSL or were commanded to compromise your service/customer privacy in any way, would you and could you just pull the plug like Lavabit did or would you run into opposition from shareholders/investors that would prevent you from doing so?” Gabriel Weinberg said: “No one is preventing me from doing that.” 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

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

Referrers

A referrer is an HTTP header field that identifies the address of the webpage (i.e. the URI or IRI) that linked to the resource being requested. By checking the referrer, the new webpage can see where the request originated.” Basically it tells a website where you came from. DDG does give this out. 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

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

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

Aurelius's Experience

I tried to switch to DuckDuckGo. I gave it about 30 days, but I kept being extremely frustrated with the search results. Yes, Google stores information about you, but this is why their search results are so good! When I would try and search for a page that I know I had visited before, it would often take me 4 or 5 attempts with DDG, but when I entered my original search term in Google it would be in the top 3 results. The fact that DDG doesn't store any info about you means that it can never improve to match the way you search for things! Admirable idea, but the implementation needs a HUGE overhaul for it to be at all useful. 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

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 Con

Doesn't do personalized searches

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

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 Con

Bing = DuckDuckGo

It uses Bing for the query. 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 Con

Bangs do not protect user privacy and can be misleading

Using these bangs will instantly connect you to the service you requested. For example typing “!g white cat with green eyes” and hitting return, drops you off on the Google website to display your results (thus logging your IP, search term and browser info immediately). It does not get you Google results inside DuckDuckGo. It is reasonable for DDG users to assume and expect a private search engine warns if there is a risk to that privacy being lost, like it does with Youtube videos but in the case of Bangs this does not happen. See More

Top Con

DuckDuckGo and Yahoo Partnership

https://web.archive.org/web/20161003060630/https://duck.co/help/company/yahoo-partnership https://duck.co/blog/blog/post/311/yahoo-partnership See More

Top Con

Hosted on Amazon servers (EC2)

Top Con

Cloud saving still needs work

Cloud save and the ability to pull up your settings on any device is a nice idea but the implementation needs work. See More

Top Con

DuckDuckGo has many 'Owners'

DuckDuckGo is owned by Gabriel Weinberg who is is the founder, current CEO and controlling shareholder. Investors/shareholders include Union Square Ventures and several others(https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/duck-duck-go-series-unknown--5d9c6644). DuckDuckGo generates it’s income from advertising (Bing Ads) and collects affiliate revenue (Amazon, eBay). See More

See All

The Best 1 of 28 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for DuckDuckGo

My Recommendation for DuckDuckGo

Very protective of user privacy

Time limit only a month

Infinite scroll of search results

No date information in search results

Has a wide spectrum of instant answers

Horrible search results

Has a .onion site

DuckDuckGo has no 3rd party certifications

Allows searching from specific sites using bangs

Owner would compromise his service/customer privacy

Ads are non-obstructive and don't track you

Referrers

Many customization options for appearance

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

Can disable advertisements

Search using language other than English is not so great

Can function without JavaScript

Doesn't do personalized searches

Good for Linux users

Shows too few images

Bing = DuckDuckGo

Form over function (overall search experience is poor)

Bangs do not protect user privacy and can be misleading

DuckDuckGo and Yahoo Partnership

Hosted on Amazon servers (EC2)

Cloud saving still needs work

DuckDuckGo has many 'Owners'

27 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for StartPage

My Recommendation for StartPage

Privacy focused

Uses only Google search results

Offers a free proxy with every search results

Filter by time like Google

Based in Netherlands (Europe)

Recommended for its no-logging privacy

Pulls results from two search engines

Referrers

Independent & Private

Certification

My Recommendation for searx

My Recommendation for searx

Self hosted

Privacy focused

Free software

Very customizable

My Recommendation for Qwant

My Recommendation for Qwant

No user tracking

Results non accurate as Google

Ad free/Merchant independent

Not very good Android and iOS app

No filter bubble

Filter by time restricted to max. one month

Private infrastructure and hosting

Hosted in the EU

Has a lite version

Qwick commands (jump to any other search/website)

Instant answers

Ecosystem Qwant Maps, Music, Boards...

Good search results

My Recommendation for Yandex

My Recommendation for Yandex

Very lightweight and fast

Good search

No repeated ads

Minimalistic and beautiful

My Recommendation for YaCy

My Recommendation for YaCy

Free / libre software

Difficult to censor

My Recommendation for Search Encrypt

My Recommendation for Search Encrypt

No creepy ads around the web

Lack of features

No tracking

Perfect forward secrecy