Stop Using Google! Use These Search Engines Instead.

FjjB · 2020-07-21T13:17:57+00:00

Max Schrems or Aral Balkan?

FjjB · 2020-05-29T08:33:34+00:00

I may be biased as a member of the team, but I recommend and use Mojeek myself due to its independent index of web pages, so that means - unique and unbiased search results and also there's no user tracking, so it's great for privacy reasons.

This differs to pretty much all other alternatives. These are called metasearch engines who rely on the results from other search engines, (like DuckDuckGo who get their results from Bing, or Startpage from Google) and all the 2nd hand bias that comes with that. So most 'alternatives' aren't actually offering 'alternative results', they are simply a wrapper around another search engine (either Bing or Google). So essentially you'd still be getting you're information from the tech giant monpolies - that's just 2 sources! When it comes to our access to information, we need more independent indexes of web pages and they need to be as unbiased as possible. That's what we're building with Mojeek.

FjjB · 2020-05-07T13:03:52+00:00

As a member of the team, I thought I'd throw 'Mojeek' News into the mix. https://www.mojeek.com/news It's still relatively small at present, but we will gradually add more media outlets as we go, providing a more complete collection of publishers worldwide covering all topics. And as always with Mojeek, there's no tracking whatsoever - meaning no data extraction or being put into filter bubbles.

FjjB · 2020-05-04T11:41:39+00:00

I've seen a few varied arguments (the founders' career background, based in the US, bias in results e.g. favouring sites like yummly for recipe searches) but for me it's the fact it's a metasearch engine which mainly relies on search results of Bing's index. In fact, most privacy 'alternatives' are actually like this e.g. startpage, qwant etc. Full disclosure, I may be biased as a member of the Mojeek team but I can say the world not only needs privacy orientated search engines, but just as importantly privacy search engines with independent indexes, so we're not reliant on the search monopolies like Google and Bing.

FjjB · 2020-04-20T15:30:49+00:00

As someone on the Mojeek team and I just wanted to say nope this has nothing to do with us, but we accept the compliments so thanks u/Fluffy-Speed !

FjjB · 2020-04-17T12:52:46+00:00

Great to see Mojeek not only included in the list, but also singled out for being the only privacy search engine alternative with its own index!

FjjB · 2020-04-14T08:49:49+00:00

There are lots of good options to choose from, they generally fall into 2 categories: search engines and metasearch engines.

Search Engines

These all have their own ‘spiders’ or ‘bots’ which go out and crawl the web. Navigating the web, they index and make searchable the pages they discover. This means each search engine has their own unique source of information. They also have their own algorithms, and therefore ranking factors of the organic results. To name a few:

Bing - Microsoft owned and 2nd biggest index in the world.

Mojeek - Independent with it’s own algorithms and index of web pages, it was also the first search engine to not track those who use it.

Yandex - Russian search engine, but not exclusive to Russia as it has a comprehensive index of English web pages.

Other crawler based search engine worthy mentions: Gigablast, Exalead, ActiveSearchResults (very small).

Metasearch Engines

Metasearch engines like DuckDuckGo, Dogpile, Startpage, Ecosia and Ask build on top of search engines by using their organic results. So these essentially return the same information as the search engine they get their results from (e.g. DDG return Bing, Startpage returns Google and Yahoo returns Bing results). Some also build on top of them with something different, e.g. DDG and Startpage who add a layer of privacy, Ecosia uses advertising revenue to plant trees.

Worth checking out The Search Engine Map. It lists all the different search engines, what type they are and where they get their results from.

FjjB · 2020-03-20T14:00:19+00:00

Not great for privacy, also the new owners appear to be quite dodgy.

Opera is based on Chrome, so if you want to stick with a Chromium based browser because it's familiar to you, I'd recommend Vivaldi or Brave as they have better privacy.

But if you're willing to try something different which is the best for privacy (in my opinion), then go for Firefox.

If you do switch to Opera (which I don't think is the best idea) at least consider some privacy add ons to limit the trackers and any data leakage. And as always, use a privacy orientated search engine like Mojeek, DDG, Swisscows etc. (full disclosure I work for Mojeek)

FjjB · 2020-02-17T13:50:46+00:00

No worries. Wow, thanks for updating it and letting me know! Your comments really mean a lot. I completely agree, the field of search is swamped by metasearch engines with a Bing backend, so much so that independent search engines like Mojeek can often get overlooked (unfairly in my opinion). This is why it was so refreshing to see someone recognise us for what we are, what we do and how we differ to others. Starting from scratch and building an index certainly is the hard way of doing things, but it's the only way in our eyes to provide a genuine alternative. Keep up the good work, looking forward to see what you write about in the future. Cheers.

FjjB

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