Privacy-Friendly Alternative Search Engines

Search engines with a strong focus on privacy

Most of these can also be accessed via https (ssl) wich means your search terms are encrypted all the way between you and the searchengine. For those of us who are even more paranoid and don't like searchengines (or other websites) storing cookies on your computer, most of these search engines offers a way to use certain settings (like language, family filter etc.) by accessing the search engine through a special url (url parameters).

Duck Duck Go (my personal favourite)
- http://duckduckgo.com/ Privacy Policy
- https://duckduckgo.com/ (encrypted ssl version)
- Duck Duck Go URL parameters
- http://3g2upl4pq6kufc4m.onion/ If you are on TOR you can access Duck Duck Go through their tor hidden service (all searches are by default end-to-end encrypted and anonymous).

Status update: “You should know that Duck Duck Go was purchased in part by a Venture Capital firm that is associated with Google". (to be verified)

WARNING: Skynet!

Be careful when using these these search engines, they are both ok from a privacy preserving perspective but, they both use Skynet aka. Google to get their search results.

Ixquick
- http://www.ixquick.com/ Policy
- https://www.ixquick.com/ (encrypted ssl version)
- Ixquick Settings Just click Generate URL and the bottom of the page, and you will get an URL with your personal settings to use as your search engine.

Scroogle
- http://www.scroogle.org/ Privacy Policy
- https://ssl.scroogle.org/ (encrypted ssl version)
- Scroogle HTTPS Langugage Support (URL for specifik language)

Others (non tracking ones)

Others (non Google ones)

http://search.yahoo.com/ Is the second largest search engine after....

http://www.bing.com/ Microsofts third search engine...

http://www.altavista.com AltaVista was once one of the most popular search engines but its popularity has waned due to the rise of

http://www.lycos.com Old search engine from 1995

http://www.amfibi.com General search engine which includes its own index of websites.

http://www.chacha.com This search engine is a fusion of computer technology and human

intelligence. Live human guides are available to provide additional assistance in finding relevant results.

http://cluuz.com Web search engine featuring semantic cluster graphs, image extraction, and tag clouds.

http://www.cuil.com/ Search engine with results shown with images and a drill-down menu. General feature, webmaster and investor information

http://www.entireweb.com The English-language version of a Swedish search engine with a clean interface and large database.

http://www.factbites.com/ A cross between a search engine and an encyclopedia. The results return complete, informative sentences about the search topic. Related topics are suggested.

http://www.hakia.com/ Ontological semantic and natural language processing (NLP) based search engine.

http://kalooga.com/ A search engine for finding images on the web, specializes in finding gallery pages.

http://www.lexxe.com/ Processes natural language queries and delivers results in clusters by topic. Queries can be keywords, phrases or short questions.

http://www.mahalo.com/ Human compiled and edited search engine.

http://middlespot.com/ Provides a unique search interface for saving, annotating, and sharing search results.

http://mozeek.com Search engine with a simple interface and no advertising. Offers the ability to create a customized topical or personal search index

http://www.mozdek.com Uses open source search technologies and an index seeded from the Open Directory.

http://scrubtheweb.com Search engine with sponsored links at the top of results. Also offering a meta tag builder and analyzer.

http://searchhipp.com Weblog dedicated to coverage of the next generation of search engines and new technologies from the original players with tips, tricks, and tutorials on how to search more effectively.

http://ulysseek.com A straightforward search engine with a simple interface.

http://wotbox.com Search engine with country specific searching. Options to display country flags, and include preview and translation features. Sponsored links appear in panels separate from the main results.

http://www.ask.com A search engine with encyclopedia, human compiled links, and normal web search. It also answers questions.

P2P Search engines

Sourceforge projects

Harvest - A distributed search engine program.
Brain Network Search Engine - P2P search engine program allowing dynamic connections of nodes.
YACY distributed WWW search engine - Just what the name sounds like... (Official site)
Sourceforge distributed computer projects
CLucene - a C++ search engine - A C++ port of Lucene
Combine focused crawler
Friend2Friend - A decentralised network scripting language

Sources

List compiled by We Rebuild available at: http://werebuild.eu/wiki/Alternative_search_engines
Distributed P2P search engine at Wikiversity