The 11 Best Private Search Engines For Anonymity in 2024

October 17, 2024 By Johan Curtis No Comments 10 minutes

It wouldn’t have been a long while when you opened Google on your smartphone or laptop and searched for something online. The user dependency on Google is immense. However, the passing of time and changes in policies of how Google uses user data have made the users attentive. This is where the search for some of the best private search engines comes in.

Note: Using privacy search engines ensure privacy protection. However, you can elevate security by using FastestVPN. Pairing a VPN and a private search engine spoofs your IP address, making you intractable online.

This guide walks you through the 11 best private search engines that don’t save search histories or other user data. Meaning you’re intractable on the web. Following the list, we’ll cover the common questions and wrap up.

Quick List – the 11 Best Private Search Engines in 2024

Don’t feel like going through each and every private search engine in detail? We have you covered. Have a look at the 11 best private search engine platforms that don’t use user information and are as anonymous as you want them to be:

1. DuckDuckGo
2. Startpage
3. Qwant
4. Swisscows
5. Ecosia
6. Brave Search
7. Searx
8. MetaGer
9. Mojeek
10. Gibiru
11. Wolfram Alpha

Why Must You Use Private Search Engines?

Privacy search engines don’t save user data like Google, Bing, and other popular options. Meaning that they don’t collect everything about the products you prefer, the pages you stay the longest on, and other information that facilitates tailored data.

A report from Backlinko reports Chrome to host 3.45 billion web users. But despite the rising popularity, it doesn’t stand up to the elevating privacy standards. In fact, it collects massive amounts of data. That’s where the private search engines step in to offer a secure and anonymous browsing experience.

Moreover, the most private search engine won’t track your IP address. This paves the way for various benefits. Such as safety from potential data theft, IP leaks, and access to geo-restricted content. Simply put, here’s what to expect when using the best search engine for privacy:

• Minimal data collection
• No personalized marketing
• More privacy-focused
• Independent web index
• Profiling protection

What Is A Private Search Engine?

A private search engine is a search engine that will not store or alter user data or content, according to the user. This means that your browsing activity will not be used to show you targeted ads regarding restaurants near you or the jacket you were searching for of your favorite celebrity wear. 

Popular private search engines like DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Qwant, etc., are known for their user experience as they comply with privacy laws that state they can not record user data, especially for showing them ads and products they are interested in purchasing.

The Best Private Search Engines In Detail

1. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is one of the most popular privacy search engines today. It collects your search results from 400 sources, including Bing, Wikipedia, and Yahoo. It also offers a bang feature that allows you to visit a website directly when you add an exclamation mark in front of your search term.

The best thing about DuckDuckGo is that there are no ads. Meanwhile, the interface is clean and easy to use, making DuckDuckGo safe for use. This search engine also comes with a Chrome browser extension, making browsing even more convenient and anonymous.

The DuckDuckGo !bang command is quite popular for getting results from Google that the Google search engine shows that collect user information.

Features

• Browser extension
• No tracking or sharing of user data
• Bang for direct search queries
• Simple UI
• Ad-free browsing

2. Startpage

Startpage (previous users may know it as Ixquick) is a search engine company that aims to protect user privacy by not collecting data. While being a private search engine, there’s still an Anonymous viewing option that enables the users to access search results without revealing their identity.

It is based in the Netherlands, and so, it has to comply with the GDPR, protecting the users’ information. It generates its revenue through contextual advertising, adhering to strict European privacy laws.

Features

• Anonymous viewing
• Private tabs
• No targeted advertising
• No online profiling
• Follows European privacy standards

3. Qwant

Qwant is a high-privacy search engine based in France, so it has to meet strong European data and privacy laws.

It is one of the best free private search engines that doesn’t use cookies, collect personal data, or track users in any way, and its design is quite similar to Google. Moreover, it provides its own web indexing without collecting user data.

In addition, this secure search engine offers a clean and user-friendly interface and categorizes its users’ search results into three main categories.

• Web
• News
• Social media

The homepage offers news, trending people, events, and other exciting stories.

Moreover, just like the DuckDuckGo, Qwant also offers a bang feature that makes it easier to visit a website by adding an exclamation mark right after typing your search query.

Features

• Automatic Categorizing search results
• No tracking search
• Clean and simple UI
• Dedicated music and Kids’ section

4. Searx

This is a free metasearch engine tool. This secure search engine is highly privacy-focused, so it never shares your search history or IP address with its other search partners.

The best thing is that Searx blocks cookies and protects data from malicious scripts.

Searx links search results to the specific site directly instead of a tracked redirect link. This way, it protects you from accidentally clicking on malicious sources.

Features

• Never shares and stores data and browsing history
• Removes everything when you are done browsing
• 100% open source in nature

5. Swisscows

Swisscows private search engine never records your browsing data and immediately removes it.

It is a safe and secure search engine that never displays or indexes something inappropriate, so your kids can use it for a secure browsing experience. This indexing feature fits the criteria of the German market. Swisscows is based in Switzerland, and it deploys user-data protection in compliance with European Internet laws.

It has integrated AI technology so that you can expect more accurate results for privacy as per your search context on this best search engine.

Features

• Built-in content filter
• Family-friendly content
• Private search

6. MetaGer

With MetaGer, you can do confidential, private, and non-traceable online searches. This secure search engine gathers data using different web crawlers. It uses private encryption for security and also supports Tor Network so that you can access its search results with complete anonymity.

Features

• Hides IP address with a private proxy
• It enables you to Anonymize search queries.

7. Mojeek

Mojeek doesn’t depend on external search engines, and it is a crawler-based search engine. It crawls the web and forms its own index of websites, and using those websites, it produces the search results.

Since it involves no external algorithms, you get absolutely fair and unbiased search results. Moreover, this best search engine for privacy has a strict no-tracking policy, so it won’t track or put cookies on your device.

Mojeek doesn’t track or record your IP address. Instead, it will replace the IP address with a two-digit code showing only your country.

Features

• Search classification by news, web, and images
• Private search
• Set customized preferences

8. Ecosia

Powered by Bing, this eco-friendly, CO2-neutral private search engine ensures privacy in various ways. This means that it neither stores data nor creates a profile or sells it.

Ecosia is highly focused on environmental health and uses 80% of its profits on the plantation. However, it is not ad-free as it generates revenues from showing non-intrusive ads.

Additionally, this secure search engine encrypts your internet searches for protection. Ecosia never creates user profiles based on search patterns. Neither does it use external tracking tools.

Features

• Ad-supported
• Support for a desktop computer or laptop and mobile iOS and Android apps.

9. Gibiru

Gibiru also uses encryption to protect your data. This best search engine for privacy has no ads and uses Google’s algorithm to fetch your search results without tracking.

Gibiru is not a custom-built privacy-focused search engine. It is only a Google-based web tool that has eliminated privacy concerns.

This secure search engine is faster than other encrypted search engines because it uses “Google Custom Search” to provide quality service with zero tracking methods.

Features

• Never save your search data on servers
• Identifies censored sites and brings them to the top

10. WolframAlpha

WolframAlpha is more of an answer engine; it has got all the answers for you. It has search requests compiled in categories of mathematics, science, technology, culture, and everyday life research and studies.

You can use it as an everyday search engine, especially if your kid goes to school or you yourself are a teenager or a college student. It is a great way to enhance your studies and get detailed solutions to your questions and problems that require step-by-step methods.

Features

• 100% free
• solutions to everyday mathematics questions
• best platform for study-related problems

11. Brave Search

This is an open-source browser that is widely used as an alternative to Chrome. Brave Search features an independent browsing experience without tracking user searches for targeted advertising.

That said, Brave Browser restricts third-party ads and ensures that all web pages follow HTTPS connections for enhanced security.

Features

• AI-powered features
• Offers own web index (Web Discovery Project)
• Personalized rules and filters

Are Private Search Engines Really Private?

So, are private search engines really private, or is this not the case? Different private search engines follow different regulations when it comes to protecting user privacy. While some don’t collect any user data at all, a few of them collect a little bit of information, like some of the sites a user visits the most.

In other cases, a specific search engine would follow its own business model to generate revenue. In any way, you, the user, have to take care of your data yourself. This is where the use of a premium VPN comes in. A FastestVPN subscription will safeguard your data and protect your online activity with industry-standard features that have the power to reroute your IP address, hide your online activity, kill your connection if the internet signal drops, and much more.

What Is the Difference Between a Search Engine and a Private Search Engine?

Here are the primary differences between standard search engines and privacy search engines:

Wrapping Up

These are the best private search engines in 2024. However, keep in mind that private search engines are not 100% private. They can only hide your online activities from the sites you visit. Your ISP can still track and sell your browsing data. For further privacy protection, we then recommend connecting to FastestVPN. A VPN + search engine is a blend of a private browsing experience with guaranteed digital anonymity via a VPN because you connect to a different server. Furthermore, the VPN’s privacy features elevate cybersecurity standards like never before. FastestVPN encrypts traffic and masks your location to provide an anonymous online experience.

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