Hello! You are probably familiar with the term search engine. Besides, when you hear it, you probably associate it with Google. Indeed, the Mountain View company is the search engine beyond comparison. However, don’t think that it is the only search engine out there. There are a considerable variety of alternatives to Google that work, as a search engine, to find all kinds of content on the Internet. You may ask yourself, if Google works, why use another search engine? Foremost for privacy reasons. But you may also want to try an alternative to the Google experience. Read on to find out The top search engine alternatives to Google.
The best alternatives to Google
A search engine and a search engine are not the same thing. Consequently, in this list of the best alternatives to Google, there are fewer search engines than search engines. Indeed, many search engines are based on other search engines. For example, Yahoo relies on Bing to deliver its results. However, it offers a different service than the one provided by the Microsoft search engine.
Bing
Bing is Microsoft’s alternative to Google. Moreover, in terms of market share, it ranks second behind it. However, its share is still far from representing a serious threat to the Mountain View giant. Unlike Google’s appearance, which is characterized by its sobriety, Bing is displayed with a colorful background that keeps changing. In addition, it has a bar at the bottom with current contents that may be relevant to the user. On the other hand, at the top it has a bar that allows you to switch between the typical search or focus on images, videos, maps, and news among others.
Bing incorporates its functions to differentiate itself from the competition. For example, text translator or grammar checker. The results page, however, is almost identical to the one offered by Google.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo, at the design level, is more similar to Google. Its page is characterized by its flat background in a single color and the search bar, with no major decorations. However, its greatest virtue is that its focus is on user privacy. Unlike Google, it does not store users’ search history on its servers. Nor does it offer personalization based on our interests and Internet activity. It is a hybrid search engine. That is, it uses its crawler and an API of the main search engines present on the Internet. For example, Bing and Yandex, among others.
DuckDuckGo has one ad per search, but it is not based on our history, but on that search itself. Privacy is protected to the maximum through a proxy. Moreover, it is a free software project. It is certainly a powerful alternative, but it protects users’ personal information and, therefore, their privacy to a greater extent. We know that this is one of the main reasons why users abandon the use of Google.
Yahoo Search
With Yahoo Search, we are back to an elementary interface. The logo, the search bar and that’s it. However, the search bar is accompanied by icons that allow access to sections of food, stock market, news, and others. Although the result is powered by Bing, the visual experience is Yahoo’s own.
Regarding privacy, it is not at the level of DuckDuckgo. However, it is still more private than Google. It also offers special results to know the weather forecast, or to know the business hours of businesses that are near us. In this, it is similar to Google. In conclusion, it is not as complete as the popular search engine, but it offers similar features as well as more respect for the user’s privacy.
Yandex
It is certainly not the most popular alternative to Google, but it certainly deserves a chance. It is known as the Google of Russia because it comes from there. Its main page offers the typical search bar, but it also has specific buttons to access videos, images, maps, and other advanced queries. A marked difference with Google is that the results pages are displayed with a bit more rich content.
When searching in any web page we will see that the name, the URL address, the description, and also an icon of the same one that helps us to navigate faster through the results. In social networks, for example, the profile image appears next to the search results. In addition, it also has its browser with the same name. Just as Google does with Chrome.
You.com
We want to close this list with a recent but also very original bet. Indeed, Google and others on this list use crawlers that are in charge of indexing websites and algorithms that anticipate what users need. However, you.com breaks this paradigm. Thus, they aim to make web searches less dependent on advertising and SEO guidelines and give users more control over their Internet searches.
You.com is a search engine that launched its first beta version in November 2021. Its use stands out for its interface and some exclusive functionalities. As for its appearance, it is far from the one traditionally shown by the most popular search engines, which display a list of all the links related to your search. However, this search engine displays the results in the form of cards organized by sources and grouped in a series of specific categories such as web results, images, videos, news and social networks. In this last section you will see results from platforms such as Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram or LinkedIn.
Privacy is everything!
Another of the main features of you.com is that it does not display advertising in its search results. However, it is not ruled out that in the future they will show advertising that respects privacy. Precisely, another strong point is privacy. Since its developers claim to be safer than Google and DuckDuckGo. Consequently, by activating the private mode, it never stores your preferences, queries, and locations.
This search engine also does not use trackers such as Google Analytics and only uses cookies to personalize your search profile and not to track your Internet activity. Of course, in private mode, no cookies of any kind are used. To start using you.com, we simply have to access its website. In addition, you can add their extension for Google and derivatives to use as default search engine. Although it is still in beta mode, it is a great option to consider.
Ultimately, we have looked at the top search engine alternatives to Google. Of course there are many more options, but we consider these to be the best. See you soon!
