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Better Search

Article for: Everyone
Difficulty: Easy
Importance: Very

Using Google for search enables them to create a profile of everything you've ever searched for and combine it with whatever else they know about you and sell your profile to anyone who will pay them. They will tailor what your see in your search to maximize your clicks. They will also tailor news and search results to what they'd like you to believe. Furthermore, their results just aren't that good. These same criticisms exist for Bing, but with Microsoft instead of Google as the villain. Though, honestly, Bing does not appear to be as bad as Google.

I get better results using the excellent, privacy protecting DuckDuckGo search engine. They do not collect or store personal information. They don't track me. Their results are better. This is my default search engine for my browser. Google is increasing the number and space allotted to paid advertising in your search results. Those advertisements sometimes include malware so they are dangerous to click on, even though Google is displaying them to you.

Seven more options you might prefer


  • Searx: This is an open source privacy respecting meta-search engine. That means that they compile the searches from other engines. They are open about it and you can select which engines they use. I wrote an article about them here. I used to use Searx, but, too often found it slow or failing, so switched to DuckDuckGo.
  • Qwant: Is a wonderful privacy respecting French-based search engine. It is fair and impartial, unlike Google. It neither promotes nor demotes sites based on politics. Qwant is beautiful, excellent and provides European oriented for news. They also have a children's section with protected content. I wrote an article on it here.
  • Swiss Cows: Their engine is more family oriented, trying to strip out heavy violence and pornography. Swiss based. Good, fast search results.
  • Startpage: Strips out your personal information and uses Google. Startpage is Quick. If you must use Google search, at least use Startpage instead.
  • Yandex: Russia's answer to Google. It is a good search engine and gives a different perspective.
  • Peekier: Another privacy search engine. It supplements its own engine with Bing results. What makes it special is that it provides a large image of the web pages search results. This lets you view the pages and make a better determination of whether it is right for you. Also, by seeing the page before clicking on it, you get a little protection.
  • Yippy: Another excellent privacy respecting search engine. It provides the results along with a side panel that clusters the results by topic, time, sites or sources. The subtopics of your search open up to list those results only. It has a preview function. The time lists articles from the last 90 days, 30 days, 7 days, or 24 hours. I'm using this more and more.

Further Reading:

  • Bleeping computer article on how Malware is infiltrating Google search ads.
  • Project Veritas expose on Google manipulating their search and news results to fit their political agenda. There appears to be some truth to these accusations. 25 minute video. Here's an article reporting on the expose.
  • Ted Cruz questions a Google executive about the above video during senate hearing.



Date: July 2019


Creative Commons License
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

 
 
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