Four Sites for Private Search

Google is the leader in search, and anyone who has used a variety of search engines can understand why.  I recently experimented by running most of my searches through multiple search engines, and I found that Google did the best job at placing what I wanted at the top of the search results.  (To be honest, no other search engine came anywhere close to performing as well as Google.)

However, many people shy away from using Google because of privacy issues.  Bing and Yahoo, the other two major search engines, also track your searches (and other data) to build a profile on you.  While there are some benefits to tracking searches, many people feel that the loss of privacy outweighs the benefits.

If you want to search without compromising your privacy, you have some options.  Here are four alternative search engines that promise not to track you:

1) Startpage - If you like Google's results without the loss of privacy, Startpage is probably the option for you.  Startpage takes your request, submits it to Google, and then returns Google's results to you.  Google never sees the requests from the computer initiating the search, it only sees the requests from Startpage's servers.

Startpage's site states, "Your IP address is never recorded, your visit is not logged, and no tracking cookies are placed on your browser. When it comes to protecting your privacy, Startpage runs the tightest ship on the Internet."

2) DuckDuckGo - DuckDuckGo gives back its own search results (it doesn't get them from a site like Google), but it does not log any information about your computer.  Because of this, it cannot attempt to personalize results; a particular search term will return the same results regardless of user.  If you want to see DuckDuckGo's humorous "privacy policy in a nutshell", you can see it here.

3) Yippy - Yippy's site promises to be a 100% private, family friendly search engine.  Like DuckDuckGo, it ranks its own results instead of gathering them from somewhere else.  Yippy's site promises: "We won't track your activity on our platform, store your history in our browser, monitor or record your searches, store copies of your email, or collect any more personal information than you volunteer. We also won't sell your personal information to advertisers for profit."

4) Ask Eraser - Ask.com offers an eraser that will set a single cookie on your browser to indicate that Ask Eraser is enabled, and then delete all other Ask.com cookies.  Ask does clarify that your searches will be tracked if law enforcement asks them to log them, even if Ask Eraser is enabled.