When Google officially started in September 1998, it encountered around 10,000 search queries per day. Today, 20 years later, Google works with 65,000 search queries per second. And this is good for Google because at least its search results are always top class. So, we wanted to determine if there are good alternatives out there, with Google taken as our reference. However, many users frowned when asked about alternatives to Google: “Why to search for alternatives when you have the best search engine already?”, they asked.

Google’s good search technology shows only one side of the coin. In the last 20 years, not only has the number of search queries increased but Googles has also undergone changes and is snooping into the privacy of its users.

One look into the Google data privacy declaration, riddled with clauses, is enough to learn that Google not only saves search queries and IP addresses but also personalizes the data, uses it for advertisement purposes and shares it with third-parties. Fortunately, there are certain counter-models available that respect your privacy.

Best Google Search Engine Alternatives

We tested seven Google alternatives, which also includes the more popular choices like Microsoft Bing and the veteran Yahoo, as well as the Qwant search engine originating from France.

These are joined by four more search engines that have signed up to protect your privacy: DuckDuckGo, StartPage, MetaGer and eTools.

But security and data protection were only one aspect of the test. The search quality was more interesting for us as good results are the main purpose of a search engine – and the most important reason, why the world searches mainly using Google. Here, we must get rid of prejudices first. In this test, we show that Google is not the only one that can deliver good test results.

With a lot of efforts, we have also tested standard search terms and complex search queries such as image, video, product and local search.

The bottom line – Google does deliver the best results for our 100 test queries, but the competition is a very close one here. Mainly, Bing surprised us and gets the best results with a score of 95.6 points for quality of search.

The test winner StartPage also scores well, showing good results. If you have not heard of StartPage, then you must try it out as it delivers quality results similar to Google. This search engine will forward all search queries to Google anonymously, meaning that you can google anonymously using StartPage.

Despite this fact, StartPage still, ranks behind Google when it comes to search quality. The reason is because not all Google functions can be easily tapped.

For example, if you search for “EPL Dates” then you will see a small table with all dates as top results in Google. In contrast to this, StartPage delivers the first Google match on to an external source, in this case, a page to the EPL schedule on Fox Sports’ website. You will also find information here but not as directly as Google.

Comparison with Google

How do the Google alternatives battle it out for the top spot in the comparison? We have collected the pros and cons for the candidates:

Pros:- Very good protection of privacy, additional search proxy integrated

Cons:- Less search comfort, outdated appearance, search quality lower than Google

PGP Encryption Creator Phil Zimmermann Joins Startpage.com

Zimmermann is best known as the creator of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), encryption software he designed in the 1990’s to fight government surveillance. PGP scrambles data, making it unreadable without the right credentials or “key”.

Pros:- Good privacy protection, good automation options via Bangs

Cons:- Servers also in USA, search quality lower than Google, less search comfort.

Pros:- Very good privacy protection, servers in Europe, chic appearance and processing of results

Cons:- Less search comfort, search quality overall a bit less than Google

Pros:- Very good privacy protection, a rating of search engines

Cons:-Less search comfort, worse search quality, outdated appearance

Bing is the best when it comes to search comfort as Microsoft has initially learned a lot from Google and then designed the whole thing with its own clever ideas.

Bing also has a local search function and a very good video and photo search. It’s also the only search engine that responds to the search for “Bitcoin Rate” with an elegant image.

Bing is also fast and cuts a fine figure in mobile browsers, as well as an app under Android and iOS. Speaking of search comfort, Bing had a loophole in the test, none of the

alternatives can properly keep up with it.

The most important message of this test is that there are alternatives to Google that deliver similar good search results and also take care of your privacy at the same time.

Therefore, our recommendation is that you make sure you google something different.

Pros:- Cool appearance and processing of results, same with search comfort, good photo search.

Cons:- Search quality overall a bit low than Google, equally curious for data protection.

Pros:- Privacy protection, a rating of search engines

Cons:- Tracking via ad banners (can be disabled), less search comfort, worse search quality.

Pros:- No benefits as compared to Google

Cons:- Less search comfort, worse search quality, bad data protection.

Search engines with a difference

Eco-search engine Search and do something good under ecosia.org. The German search

engine donates a lot of money for Eco-projects and has planted over 20 million trees.

Knowledge machine WolframAplha is already being used since 2005. Upon submitting queries, users do not get any link groups but possibly, direct responses.

Peer-2-Peer search YaCy follows a different approach compared to other search engines. The P2P search does not run on servers but is distributed on the computers of the users.

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