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When we think of search engines and SEO, Google comes to mind. But do you know that there are plenty of alternative search engines to Google?

And to a certain extent, some of these search engines protect your privacy far better than Google. They don’t track your online activities, search history, location, IP, etc.

Your search queries are entirely anonymized before search results are pulled from the databases, making it possible for all user identification data to be stripped off.

Though it has the largest market share, Google isn’t the only search engine online.

If you want to try a different search engine, here are 11 alternative search engines that are better than Google, depending on your use case.

Best Alternative Search Engines to Google

Here are the search engines better than Google you can try.

1. Bing

Bing search

Bing Microsoft is a US-based and the second most popular search engine to Google. It has a global market share of 8.88% as of July 2022.

It is the most robust search engine alternative to Google in the US, with a market share of 7.23%. And in the UK, Bing holds 9.61% of the UK search engine users.

Bing is easy to use and provides relevant search results like Google. For web admins, optimizing for Bing can be a great additional source of target traffic.

The good part is that optimizing for Bing is no different from Google. You’re simultaneously optimizing for both search engines when you do the right thing.

Bing offers important SERP features such as knowledge graph, currency conversion, auto-complete, rich snippets, related searches, People also Ask, translate, etc.

If your country is on the selected list, you can earn points or rewards from the Bing browse and reward program.

2. Yahoo

Yahoo Search engine

Yahoo, one of the earliest search engines before Google, has a global desktop market share of 2.55%. It is the third-largest global search engine.

The Yahoo search engine is a good candidate if you’re interested in topics like finance, sports, and politics. 

The interface is more than just a search engine; it provides an all-around experience for news, entertainment, sports, politics, and email.

You can log in to Yahoo Mail from its web portal, check the weather report, scoreboard for current football matches, daily horoscope, etc.

The SERP result also features People Also Ask and related search sections. Overall, the Yahoo search engine offers many visual searches on trending topics.

3. Baidu

Baidu

Like Google, Baidu is also monetized through ads, and it’s the dominant search engine in China, with a market share of over 70%.

Baidu cannot show search results for some images and websites, especially pro-democracy sites.

However, Baidu might be a good choice if your audience is mainly Mandarin or if you need to use alternative search engines besides Google outside English.

4. Yandex

Yandex

Yandex is a Russian-based search engine and one of the best Google alternative search engines.

It is a significant search engine in Russia, holding around 47.15% share, according to StatCounter as of July 2022.

The search results are not too far off what you get from searching on Google.

You can use the Yandex search operator to refine your desired search result. 

Yandex search operator

The search engine has features like mobile apps, cloud storage, and translation services.

The feature allows you to translate into Russian and listen to native speakers and translators.

Best Privacy-Focused Alternative to Google Search Engines

The search engines in this section are privacy-focused, unbiased, and don’t track user activities like Google and Bing.

In a rare situation where first-party cookies are set by any of these private search engines, the terms and conditions are set out for understanding, approval, or rejection.

With that said, let’s explore the list…

Brave

Brave Search is an independent search engine that pulls results (up to 92%) from its database.

It is a privacy-preserving search engine that doesn’t track users’ clicks, search terms, or store search history.

It mainly focuses on user privacy, ad-free experience, encryption technology, no user profiling, and personalized or target ads.

You can perform searches on the Brave search engines distraction-free. It also has the People Also Ask section, knowledge graph panel, and find elsewhere.

Find elsewhere is a Brave Search feature that lets you search on other search engines from the Brave search result page.

There are a few settings you might want to toggle off or on.

Brave search settings

If you need 100% privacy, you can toggle the Anonymous local search off. This will allow you to search without revealing your IP or other helpful information.

Brave Search will use your device IP to perform a more relevant search without storing the information if turned on.

Discussion

This new search feature in Brave lets it include results from communities such as Reddit.

If you don’t want your search to have resulted from online communities, you need to toggle it off.

Anonymous Usage Metrics 

If you leave this on, you consent to allow Brave Search to use specific user, query, and device information to learn more about the usage and performance of their products.

Though Brave Search states this information is collected anonymously and they’re never tied to you or your device, it is still a good thing to know about. 

If Brave Search is your default browser search engine, you can set the Google fallback Mixing option.

If Brave Search can’t pull the result, your browser will go back to Google anonymously and remove the result from its index.

6. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is leading the campaign for a full private search engine world, and it’s the direct opposite of Google.

Though DuckDuckGo does make money from its search engine, it does not collect or use the user’s profile to display target ads.

Ads are displayed on its search engine based on search keywords. It makes sense that companies don’t need to track users’ profiles or data to make money through ads.

DuckDuckGo is one of the best private search engines and alternatives to Google. It is the reason millions of people use the search engine.

If you’re looking for better online privacy, where your activities are not tracked and your IP is not tied to your browsing section, DuckDuckGo is the search engine of choice.

I did a short test to see how relevant its search result is to Google. The results were not too far off.

Search result for “What is Car insurance premium” in Google…

Google search results

And search results for the same query in DuckDuckGo…

Brave search result

The top 10 result was almost the same, but a few web pages lost their Google position in DuckDuckGo. Overall, the result was about 90% identical.

7. Ecosia

Ecosia

Ecosia is one search engine worth discussing – its impact on tackling climate change is commendable. For every 45 searches on its search engine, Ecosia committed to planting a tree.

But honestly, Ecosia is not a private search engine; it uses cookies and collects anonymous user information to improve the search and show personalized results. 

You can turn off this setting, but if you leave it on, Ecosia collects and shares a unique anonymous identifier such as IP and Search history with its search partner, Bing.

It claims this information is not permanently stored and will be deleted automatically after 18 months by Bing according to its policy.

If this does not bother you, Ecosia is an excellent alternative search engine to Google.

I searched Ecosia for the exact keywords to see what it pulled off; again, the top ten results were not too far off Google.

Ecosia search results

8. Start page

Starpage

Startpage pulls results from third parties search engines such as Google, so, in essence, Startpage is your favorite Google without tracking.

It runs contextual ads on its search result but claims these ads are not the result of your search history or online activities.

From my test, ads are displayed on Startpage based on the keyword you searched.

For example, I searched the exact keywords “what is car insurance premium,” and three ads came above.

Startpage search engine results

Then I did another search for what web hosting is; here is the result within the ads above. 

Startpage search result

As you can see, these results are based on the search keywords.

According to the search engine (Startpage), users identifying information are stripped from its first server layer before sending search queries to its partners.

So, users’ data like IP, search history, and location are removed and never stored on their internal databases.

It then returns an unprofiled and non-personalized search result based on your search queries only.

Based on these factors, Startpage is one of the best alternative search engines

if you don’t want companies like Google and Facebook following you with targeted ads.

But you still want the best search result from Google.

9. SwissCows

Swisscows

Suppose you want to keep family, friends, and children off pornography and violent content online. In that case, Swisscows is one of the search engines best for internet data privacy, family use, and children.

Violence and pornography content are automatically disabled on the Swisscows search engine.

It is not a matter of choice; it is an enforced law.

To be sure, I tried a couple of search terms related to porn, and here are the results.

Swisscows search result

SwissCows does not use tracking cookies to learn about your search activities.

Using its search engines means you’re a visitor without any profile, and your activities remain anonymous.

But you can search based on location and filter results by the last 24 hours, week, month, and year.

However, Swiss cows have its index for German queries, while other language search queries are pulled from Bing. So you should expect similar results as you get from Bing.

Bing also powered the ads displayed on the SwissCows search engine.

This way, the search engines (SwissCows) earn revenue to maintain their services. Ads are served based on keywords in your search terms.

10. You.com

You.com

You.com is a private search engine that offers a user-friendly and customizable search experience.

You can rearrange your search appearance based on your preference. The search result is on one side of the page.

It also offered the People Also Ask and related search section.

If you sign up for an account, you can further customize your apps which are the sources of information.

You can perform a location-based search and filter by hour, week, month, and year.

11. Qwant

Qwant search engines

Qwant is another privacy search engine oriented; it is developed to keep your search activities cookies-free.

This search engine does not use cookies on its website; therefore, no information about you or your device is stored.

But, if you modify your search settings on Qwant, “proprietary” cookies will be set on your device to perform the followings:

  • Adapt the Qwant website to remember device preferences such as language, themes, and search location.
  • Save your search preferences for the next session.
  • Stored information about form filling, search filters, settings, trend activation on the home, etc.
  • Remember your choice for specific actions on the website – e.g., closed popup, read messages, etc.

These cookies would last up to 6 months on your devices if you did not manually delete them. And they are only activated only when you use the Qwant website.

However, Qwant does use IP addresses for fraud detection, and you can perform a location-based search by selecting your target country from the available option on the SERP. 

Bing and the Qwant search engine crawler power its search results.

FAQ – Best Search Engine Alternatives Than Google

What is The Best Alternative Search Engine to Google?

The best Google alternative search engines are Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex. Bing is more suitable if you are in the English market. And it is the second most used search engine globally.

If you want to download music, movies, and torrents, then 1DM Browser is a powerful alternative to Google. It allows users to easily search for media on the web while also providing features such as advanced filtering, fast downloads, and automated download scheduling.

Is There a Better Search Engine Than Google?

There are many search engines besides Google to use for search. If you’re not bothered by privacy, Google is the best search engine.

But if data privacy is important to you, search engines like Swisscows, DuckDuckGo, and Brave are the best search engines for privacy.

Does Google own DuckDuckGo?

Google or any other search engine does not own DuckDuckGo. It is an independent search engine that holds its search index. Gabriel Weinberg founded DuckDuckGo, and he is the CEO of the company.

He is an American businessman and entrepreneur who takes online data privacy seriously and aims to help its users achieve unbiased search engine results.

Conclusion…Best Alternative Search Engine to Google

Undoubtedly, Google is the biggest and most used search engine. It is the most powerful and advanced search algorithm today.

So, it makes sense to think that Google’s dominance in search is not a coincidence.

However, all its unique features and benefits come with a cost – privacy concerns for users, retargeting advertisements, sharing data with third parties, etc.

If alternative search engines will protect your online data and give you the quality of search results you’d want, try some of the unbiased and privacy-focused search engines on the list.

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16 Comments

  1. Crazy how many search engines there are!

    I always use bing if google doesn’t give me the results I’m after or is supressing their results (happens a lot!)

    1. Hi, Lewis,

      There are lots of options out there besides Google. Bing is my second choice, but recently, I’m starting to use Brave search more often. Thanks for your comment.

  2. I love using Brave, you get crypto rewards for using it as well. I didn’t know there were so many different search engines. I wonder if one will one day take over Google? Thanks for sharing.

    1. Hi Lisa,

      Brave is now my second favorite to Google. I love the simplicity and non-personalized search result. And you could also search on Google through Brave, that’s one thing I love about the search engine. Making it easy to search on Google in ghost mode.

      I didn’t take notice of the crypto reward, but I do see the ads but never pay attention to it. Thanks for mentioning it, I will go check it out now.

      1. Thanks, Shamsudeen. I didn’t know you could search on Google through Brave, but why would you?

  3. I remember using Altavista at the end of the 90s, but it was deleted in 2013 I believe.
    From the list above I only use duckduckgo sometimes, mostly out of curiosity to compare results.

  4. Damn! I didn’t know we have so many search engine options available. I was solely relying on google to get answers of all my queries. Surely going to give a shot to duck duck go.

    1. Everyone thinks so initially until someone shows a list like this. Thanks for reading through.

  5. Hi Shamsudeen! It’s very impressive to me that besides Google some search Engines are taking their way. Thank you very much for this informative article.

    1. Hi, Nargis,

      Glad you learn about other search engines besides Google. Let me know your favorite from the list.

  6. Hello, Shamsudeen,

    I am also using Brave as it comes with excellent privacy features. I also use duckduckgo search Engine after the Google. Thanks for sharing this list of search Engines.

    Regards,
    Vishwajeet Kumar

    1. Hi, Viswajeet,

      Brave and DuckDuckgo are anow part of my daily marketing tool. I use them for research, especially when comparing ranking across several locations, search engines, and platforms. Thanks for reading through.

  7. Damn! I didn’t know we had so many search engine options available. I was solely relying on Google to get answers to all my queries. Surely going to give a shot to duck duck go.

    1. Hi, Manish,

      You’re not alone, I once thought the same. Glad you could learn about other search engines from this post.

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