Issue 632 • 25 May – 7 June 2022 55query, but its results were otherwise the
same as Google’s
Startpage’s Privacy Protection extension
for Chromium browsers (www.snipca.
com/41850) and Firefox (www.snipca.
com/41851) lets you search privately
from anywhere on the web, and block
third-party trackers and cookies. However,
it has removed its mobile app from the
Google Play and Apple App stores,
recommending that Android and iOS
users add Startpage to their home screens
instead (see http://www.snipca.com/41852
for details).
BEST OF THE REST
Qwant
http://www.qwant.com
Based in France, Qwant prides
itself on online privacy and
neutrality. It doesn’t track your
searches, collect your data or target you
with ads, though it does detect your
location to display relevant content for
‘Great Britain’.
Qwant’s search index combines pages
found by its own web crawlers with
results from third-party search engines
(mainly Bing) and rather than encouraging
SEO tricks of the trade, it tells site owners
they can ask for their sites to be added
(though this isn’t guaranteed). As well as
finding articles and news stories, you can
search for images, videos, music, maps
and products, and install the Qwant app
on your phone or tablet. There’s also a
version of the site for kids aged 6 to 13,
called Qwant Junior.
Qwant’s results for our test searches
were similar to DuckDuckGo’s, though
we had to scroll past four adverts to
get to train-related links. Our cottage
pie search was topped with recipe
videos (see screenshot above) and an
inordinate number of US sites were
ranked highly in our World Cup search.
Ecosia
http://www.ecosia.org
Ecosia describes itself as “the
search engine that plants tree”.
Rather than profit from your
searches, it donates all the money it
makes from advertising – which is
provided by Bing, as are Ecosia’s results- to climate action, with at least 80 per
cent financing tree-planting projects.
Ecosia says it takes approximately 45
searches to generate enough ad clicks to
fund one tree, and at the time of writing
almost 150 million had been planted. This
focus on the environment doesn’t come
at the expense of privacy, because Ecosia
anonymises your searches and doesn’t
collect your data to create an advertising
profile. If only greedy Google would take
a leaf out of its book.
Ecosia produced much the same results
as other Bing-powered search engines
(bookended by its tree-funding ads, see
screenshot above). As with Qwant, US
sites were given curious prominence for
the World Cup search, but Ecosia at least
provided a conversion for our kilos-to-
stone query.
Mojeek
http://www.mojeek.com
“No tracking, Just search” says
the search box for Mojeek, which
is based in Brighton and was the firstsearch engine to implement a no-tracking
policy. It bases your search results
entirely on the keywords you enter,
doesn’t store any identifying information
about you and ranks pages according to
their quality and relevance, using its own
algorithm rather than Google or
Microsoft’s.
Mojeek’s independent index means it
finds content on sites that other search
engines ignore, while popular sources
often appear further down the list. It’s
also extremely fast – returning results
in 0.19 seconds that it took Google 0.54
seconds to generate.
Mojeek was the only search engine we
tested that didn’t auto-complete our
queries, and though its results were
indeed different, it still provided the info
we sought. You need to spell words
correctly or results will only contain
pages with those misspellings, rather
than recognising your intended search
term, though Mojeek does suggest a
‘Did you mean?’ alternative (see
screenshot below left).Qwant placed videos at the top of our search results for a cottage-pie
recipe
Ecosia’s search results include ads but at least they’re in a good, green
causeMojeek’s results are varied and useful,
provided you spell search terms correctlyDuckDuckGo’s accurate, tracker-free and
wide-ranging results, excellent extensions
and handy extras (see page 56) make it
our favourite private search engine, and
it’s the only site we tested that lets you
switch off ads. Brave Search comes a
close second, and has the advantage of
using an independent search index to
produce more varied results, but we do
have some concerns about the ads it
plans to introduce once it exits beta.
Startpage’s Anonymous View is a great
feature, but it relies on Google and we
didn’t find its search results as clearly
presented as DuckDuckGo and Brave’s.Our Verdict
Search
STOP
USING