Whoever looks for something on the Internet, consults it on Google. Among search engines, Google leads the volume of searches globally, occupying more than 90% of the market in Spain. However, contrary to what most believe, the Californian company is not the only one that offers search services on the Internet. In this article, you can discover a large number of alternatives to Google that are equal to the technology giant or even surpass it in some aspects.
Table of Contents
Outlined presentation: Google and other alternative search engines
| From | Search type | Index | Advertisements | Anonymous | Loc. Servers | Peculiarities | |
| 1997 | Webcrawler | ↑ | ✓ | ↓ | USA: USA | Wide range of services | |
| Bing | 2009 | Webcrawler | ↑ | ✓ | ↓ | USA: USA | Second major seeker |
| Ecosia | 2009 | Metasearch | ↑ | ✓ | ↓ | USA: USA | Support environmental NGOs |
| DuckDuckGo | 2008 | metasearch / Webcrawler | ? | They can be deactivated | ↑ | USA: USA | Tor hidden service |
| Yahoo! | nineteen ninety five | Webcrawler | ↑ | ✓ | ↓ | USA: USA | Freemail |
| Startpage | 2006 | Metasearch | ↑ | ✓ | ↑ | USA: US / EU | Proxy service |
| Oscobo | 2015 | Metasearch | ↑ | ✓ | ↑ | ? | Twitter results |
| Qwant | 2013 | Webcrawler | ? | ✓ | ↑ | EU | Twitter results |
| MetaGer | nineteen ninety six | Metasearch / Webcrawler | ↑ | Members can deactivate them | ↑ | EU | Non-profit organization |
| YaCy | 2003 | Point by point | or | ✘ | ↑ | No central server | Decentralized |
| Wolfram Alpha | 2009 | Semantic | ↓ | ✘ | ↓ | USA: USA | Deliver direct results |
| Yandex | 1997 | Webcrawler | ↑ | ✓ | ↓ | RU | Wide range of services |
| Baidu | 2000 | Webcrawler | ↑ | ✓ | ↓ | CN | Content censorship |
Google and Bing dominate the market
Google has always been in the eye of the hurricane when it comes to the privacy of its users’ data and it is precisely here where alternative search engines to Google intervene, betting on proposals that do not involve the storage of user data. While North American rivals such as Bing or Yahoo follow the model of the leader, in Europe numerous projects are flourishing in search of innovation, new financing models or certain audiences. For all this, it is convenient for webmasters to be aware of alternatives to Google if they want to stay informed.
Definition:The term search engine or Internet search engine is used to name the web applications that allow Internet users to explore the World Wide Web and obtain a list of responses tailored to their queries. Web search is only possible if the search engine provider manages a database of indexed pages. Depending on the search engine, images, videos, news, offers from online stores, etc. may also appear as results next to web pages.
It is true, however, that Google continues to dominate the web search engine market, especially in North America and Europe. With around 88% in the US and 90% in Europe, the search engine leads its main rivals, Yahoo and Bing, by a considerable proportion. However, in China, it is the well-known Baidu that occupies the leading position among Internet search engines. Do not forget that Google remains inaccessible to most of the population of the People’s Republic.
Presentation of alternatives to Google
Google: at the top of Internet search engines
Google, the search service of the North American company Google LLC, registers more than three billion searches, thus relegating global competition to a distant secondary position. Yet web document search, which provides answers to almost every possible question, is just one of the many services offered by the company.
Whenever needed, users Google images, videos, and news, as well as scientific products, books, and treatises, or browse online atlases. Added to this is a free email service and an office suite with online storage. With the Chrome browser, Internet users can also use a Google product to display the pages they visit.
But the ubiquity of what is probably the most powerful company in the world is not to everyone’s taste. On the issue of data protection, the digital giant from Moutain View, California, has been at the epicentre of criticism for a few years, because it uses all its services to collect data about its users. These data would serve to carry out an efficient advertising strategy, which is what constitutes the company’s main source of income since it offers most of its products for free. However, the user does not absolutely depend on it, since an alternative can be found for each Google product. If you value your private sphere, don’t miss our list of search engines.
In favour of the search in Google play a gigantic index that includes millions of pages, as well as a system of powerful algorithms that guarantee the best result for each query.
Engaged in more than 2,000 open source projects, the consortium has established itself as one of the innovation leaders in the Internet-active business sector.
Advantage:
✔ Wide range of free products
✔ Has the highest search index
✔ Accurate search thanks to its powerful algorithms
Disadvantage:
✘ Little data protection and no anonymity
✘ Servers are located in the USA.
Bing: Microsoft’s proposal in the shadow of Google
The best known alternative search engine to Google comes from Microsoft. The Bing search engine is in a comfortable second place behind Google, although at a good distance. According to the most recent data, the percentage of use of Bing in Spain already reaches 2.49%, while in the US, users of Microsoft’s search engine reach around 5.7%.
Visually it looks a lot like Google and, like this one, it also allows filtered search for images and videos. It also offers a cartographic service and, as an alternative to Google’s Knowledge Graph, Bing has the Bing Knowledge Graph, which displays information from Wikipedia.
The successor to Microsoft Live Search began in 2009 and is characterized by establishing close cooperation with social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. The integration of additional services in web search and a very attractive image search page are innovative aspects that Bing offers and are missed on Google. Of course, if you are looking for an anonymous search engine, this is not the right one, as it also uses user data to personalize advertising.
Advantage:
✔ Collaborate closely with social media
✔ Own cartographic service
✔ Offers news search
Disadvantage:
✘ Little data protection and no anonymity
✘ Servers are in the US.
Ecosia: consultations for the good of the environment
At the request of the Ecosia metasearch engine and according to its own information, a tree is planted every 1.3 seconds, so that with each visit to the page, users of this alternative to Google actively contribute to the protection of the environment. This is possible thanks to advertising revenue, 80% of which the company dedicates to research projects around the world. In the counter installed on the home page, users can track how many trees can be planted from all their searches. On average, it takes around 45 consultations to fund a tree.
Both the results and the announcements come from Microsoft Bing, although the company also uses its own algorithms that, according to the provider, should increase its efficiency. As a German company, Ecosia is subject to the data protection law of the Teutonic country. The data that is stored, such as queries, IP addresses or browser type, is sent encrypted to partners such as Microsoft.
Behind the sustainable search engine is the company Ecosia GmnH located in Berlin and, although most of the searches that it registers still come mainly from German-speaking countries (Germany, Switzerland, Austria), the interface supports other languages such as Spanish, English , French, Italian, Dutch and Swedish.
Advantage:
✔ Revenues from advertising are invested in environmental protection projects
Disadvantage:
✘ Web search data is sent to partners
DuckDuckGo: the anonymous metasearch engine
The American open-source search engine DuckDuckGo is going in a different direction. With the slogan ” The search engine that does not track you “, Duck Duck Go Inc. proposes a combination of metasearch engine and its own web crawler, relying on more than 100 services such as Bing, Yandex or Wikipedia, as well as its own DuckDuckBot program.
Very different from Google, Bing and Yahoo, DuckDuckGo presents itself as a secure search engine with a high standard of data protection. According to the administrators, the search engine does not store IP addresses or user queries and instead of personalized advertising, the ads are determined by the search terms.
In addition to web search, this search engine also allows you to filter by images, videos, news, job advertisements and products. To all this, users can also subtract commercial results from the search. And for personal settings to be stored, information can be uploaded anonymously to the cloud. With this DuckDuckGo is positioned as a serious alternative to Google for those users who prioritize the protection of their data.
Advantage:
✔ Anonymous search
✔ 400 sources for results
✔ Available as Tor hidden service
✔ You can disable advertising
Disadvantage:
✘ US servers
Yahoo: “Powered by Bing” web browser
Like Google, Yahoo is also a well-known address in Silicon Valley. The portal is one of the pioneers in the history of the Internet and currently serves millions of users around the world, especially with its webmail offering. However, its search engine has not finished curdling in our country, to the point that its offices in Madrid, where Yahoo! Iberia SL, closed in 2016 at the same time as in other cities such as Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Dubai and Milan. In the North American market, about 3% of users regularly use this search engine.
Since 2009, as a result of an agreement with Microsoft, Yahoo has used the Bing search engine. The algorithm they share is responsible for the similarity of their results so that the user who is familiar with the Microsoft product is unlikely to get remarkable surprises here. This alliance, which covers 10% of the North American market and places the two partners as serious alternatives to Google, means that web administrators with a majority American audience have to consider them.
Advantage:
✔ Cooperation with Bing
✔ Important news portal
✔ Own freemail service
Disadvantage:
✘ Little data protection is not anonymous
✘ Servers on North American soil
Startpage: the heir of Ixquick
The alternative to Google Startpage, which is defined as “the most private search tool in the world”, has existed since 2006. This year, it has also succeeded lxquick.com, a web search engine also created by the same Dutch team.
Startpage uses exclusively Google data, although, yes, the queries remain anonymous and no cookies are saved. Despite their cooperation, Startpage is reluctant to send user data to its benefactor. To collect your search results, the alternative search engine to Google examines only the Google database and the sequence in which they appear is determined by the algorithm of the service itself. Like Ixquick, Startpage is funded by non-personalized advertising.
Advantage:
✔ Anonymous search
✔ Own and paid webmail StartMail
✔ Servers in the EU
✔ Own ranking algorithm
✔ Proxy service
Disadvantage:
✘ Only use Google data
✘ Only offers web, image and video search
Oscobo: web search from Great Britain
In the same vein of anonymous search engines is the British Oscobo that, like other providers that promote themselves with high standards of protection, promises not to store or sell this data. Its creators, Fred Cornell (ex-Yahoo) and Rob Perin (ex BlackBerry) aspired to offer with this project an alternative model to the classic industry of Internet search led by Google. And that’s why this service forgoes user tracking: instead of personalized ads, only ads related to search terms are displayed.
This alternative search engine to Google does not have its own technology, so it has to resort to the Bing and Yahoo index. In addition, the search engine adds Twitter posts to search results. As additional information, there is also a search engine extension for Chrome.
Advantage:
✔ Anonymous search
✔ Show Twitter results
✔ Also includes news search
Disadvantage:
✘ Use the Bing-Yahoo network
Qwant: the search engine that respects your private sphere
Also, the French proposal Qwant prioritizes the protection of the privacy of the users. According to their own information, they do not follow their users in any way or use any content filter. The only cookies that are saved are temporary cookies and they only serve to save personal settings (language or other types of personal settings), which are deleted at the end of the session. Cookies for commercial purposes are blocked.
The term filter bubble is used in to describe an effect on the Internet, in which the user only receives highly filtered information. In this way, and thanks to the algorithms, users only have access to search results that may seem appropriate for their profile. As a consequence, communication is difficult, as the different social profiles remain in their own bubbles.
In part, the results are based on their own technology. However, this does not manage to cover all parts of the Web. For this reason, Qwat combines the knowledge of its own web crawler with the search results of Bing. By clicking on the corresponding tab, users can access not only web search results but also news, images, videos, maps or music.
Advantage:
✔ Anonymous search
✔ Servers in the EU
Disadvantage:
✘ Unclear design
MetaGer: metasearch engine with high protection
In the case of MetaGer we are faced with a product of German technology. The search service, which is presented as a safe alternative to Google, was born at the University of Hannover and since 2012 is managed in cooperation with the SUMA-EV association. To carry out the web search, MetaGer relies on the combination of its own index and other alternative search engines (up to 50) and web services such as Scopia, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Users can choose the fonts they want to use in the settings. In addition to the Spanish version, there are also German and English versions.
Not only does it promise a wide range, but it also convinces with its high-security standards, since it does not store cookies or browser traces. The IP addresses are already hidden during the search so that they are not sent to the source browser; user tracking is also dispensed with, and users have the ability to visit the results with an anonymous proxy. To this is added that the servers are located in Germany and therefore the web search complies with the demanding privacy requirements of the Teutonic country.
The metasearch engine obtains funding through advertising (ads appear on organic results), donations and contributions from association members. They receive a key with which they can use MetaGer ad-free.
In addition to the web search, MetaGer also offers other services, such as the “Associate”, with which related terms are found, the search for citations, source code and its own mapping service. Some objections that MetaGer could arouse could be related to a poor translation into Spanish and a somewhat outdated design.
Advantage:
✔ Anonymous search
✔ Non-profit association
✔ Available as Tor hidden service
✔ Use many search engines
✔ Servers in the EU
✔ Proxy service
Disadvantage:
✘ Outdated design
YaCy: decentralized search engine
In YaCy , the user becomes an administrator. Based on the “ peer to peer ” principle ( peer-to-peer network or P2P), this project follows a totally different path from that of the most popular search engines. Instead of running on a web server, this software works on the user’s own computer, which communicates with other users, thus establishing an alternative and decentralized search network that does not depend on any central computer.
In this system, the user has in his hands to decide how many pages the search engine has in the index: each user can start his own web crawler and indicate which pages he has to access. Ranking takes place when users value or devalue results. This is how this community-run search network remains free and immune from censorship.
Nor is it possible to record user data in a central instance, because the queries are not delivered to any server when the search engine is installed on the computer, where all the data remains.
The project is supported by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and, like MetaGer, by the German non-profit association for free access to knowledge, SUMA-EV.
The open-source software is available for Windows, Linux and macOS systems.
Advantage:
✔ Point-to-point / decentralized network
✔ Open-source
✔ Anonymous search
✔ The data is saved on the PC
Disadvantage:
✘ Reduced search index
✘ The program is downloaded and installed
✘ Reduced range of functions
WolframAlpha: answers instead of links
The WolframAlpha search engine pursues a completely different goal than Google’s algorithms follow: instead of delivering the best web content, the search engine tries to deliver hard data. For this, this alternative to Google delivers a large volume of data. And when you are interested in the source, you can go to it by clicking on the link. In the Premium version, users can upload images and other types of files for the search engine to analyze.
The offer is exclusively in English and Japanese and is aimed especially at scientists, school children and students. Bing and Siri, Apple’s speech assistant, also use the results obtained with WolframAlpha, a project of the North American company Wolfram Research, which specialized in the development of software for mathematics and natural sciences.
Advantage:
✔ Deliver data
✔ High understanding of queries
✔ Little data protection, it is not anonymous
Disadvantage:
✘ Only available in English
✘ Only provide data, not opinions
Note: If you prefer to continue using Google as a search engine, it is worth knowing how to do your searches in the best possible way. You can use Google’s search operators to make your search more specific and make sure you get the best possible results.
Yandex – the search engine for the Russian market
While the Western world searches on Google, in Russia the alternative search engine Yandex plays an important role alongside the American search engine (almost one in two users in Russia turn to Yandex). The service of the Russian-Dutch consortium of the same name offers in addition to web search, an image and video search function, mapping service and a translation tool. Yandex’s answer to Google Analytics is the AppMetrica web tracking solution. The company completes its service with a browser.
Yandex is considered one of the biggest innovators in the search engine market. Modifying its search algorithm in 2014 caused quite a stir by completely devaluing the link profile as a ranking criterion. With this, Yandex becomes one of the first search engines that prioritized on-page factors such as content relevance.
The Russian alternative to the West Coast champion should not be viewed as a simple Google copy. Keep in mind that Arkadi Wolosch founded Yandex a year before Google came into play. The fourth-largest search engine in the world is especially relevant for Russian-speaking regions, so those companies active in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan or Turkey would do well to consider serving search engine ads (SEA) to reach a very relevant audience.
Like Google, Yandex and especially the Webvisor tool of the AppMetrica tracking software, they are also in the focus of attention of the privacy guardians, because this tool records the movements of the mouse of the visits in video format, which in Europe involves a conflict with its data protection regulations.
Advantage:
✔ Own cartographic service
✔ Translation tool
✔ AppMetrica, a powerful SEO analysis tool
Disadvantage:
✘ Questionable data protection and no anonymity
Baidu: the Chinese search engine with a dubious reputation
With a market share of more than 75%, Baidu is the most widely used search engine in the People’s Republic of China. In the Alexa ranking, Baidu is in a comfortable fourth position among the most visited pages worldwide. However, for the western user, it has no relevance, mainly because:
- Baidu only offers its interface in Chinese.
- According to reports from international observers, the company works closely with the Chinese government to reduce critical debates with government on taboo topics.
- According to a report by the Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto, both the search engine and the browsers (desktop and mobile) at home collect personal data from users and send it unencrypted to Baidu’s servers in China.
In addition to web search services, Baidu also offers the Baike encyclopedia and the Chinese equivalent of Google Books, Baidu Tushu.
Disadvantage:
✘ The interface is only available in Chinese
✘ Content is subject to censorship
✘ Collect personal data
Which search engine is better in terms of data protection?
Comparing the different Google alternatives, the importance that many search engines give to data protection is striking . However, this fact can be understood: after all, user privacy is the only point where search engines can really beat Google. While linking queries to user-identifying information allows for accurate results and personalized ads, privacy-minded search engines should avoid this.
For an alternative search engine to offer a package that surpasses Google in terms of privacy, you can pay attention to two different approaches:
- Use search results from Google or alternative search engines, such as Bing, “masking” the user’s search.
- Use your own trackers to index the contents of the web. In this way, the user data that is collected and processed can be fully controlled.
This last option is difficult to carry out for many providers. The resources and time required to perform a full indexing of the Web is beyond the reach of many smaller companies. In practice, many alternatives to Google rely on the combination of their own web crawler and the search index of giants like Google or Bing. In this way they guarantee maximum privacy by masking queries. With a hybrid approach, the search engines Startpage, DuckDuckGo, MetaGer and Qwant are presented as the best alternatives to Google. All of them maintain the protection of the user in web search as a central objective.
Alternatives to Google for specific purposes
Alternative search engines to Google do not necessarily need to cover the entire web spectrum. More and more often you can find services for specific topics or search fields that can help users with very specific searches even better than Google.
Givero – the search engine for social causes
Givero is a charity seeker born in Denmark. Through the use of advertisements, this search engine raises money for a series of causes, which is detailed in its “Good causes” section. If you want to contribute your grain and contribute to their donations being greater, a simple gesture is enough: change your search engine.
TinyEye – how to find the images?
TinyEye presents a different way to search than what has been presented so far: with this reverse image search engine, you do not use words to search, but images (also their URL). From them, you can find other similar images.
Lilo
The alternative to Google Lilo is a rare French origin search engine. When a user uses Lilo to do their searches, they receive a drop of water (symbolically) that they can donate to the charity of their choice. In addition, it pays special attention to the safety of its users, as it avoids tracking for advertising.
Note: Alternatives to Google like Ecosia, which raises money for a good purpose, or the WolframAlpha search engine, for scientific topics, can be included within the category of specialized search engines.
Alternative search engines for the little ones
Nowadays it is important that the little ones learn as soon as possible how they can find information on the Internet. With children’s search engines this task can be greatly facilitated. These web search engines work with whitelists and blacklists and only show results from kid-friendly web pages. To do this, these children’s search engines use different criteria such as design, data protection, advertising, price, etc. Among the best offers on the market are: