The Best Google Search Alternatives for Most People
It’s not just you: Google search is getting worse. This is more than the annoying new AI field at the top of the results page , which takes a long time to load and tends to spit out all sorts of nonsense. Additionally, the overall quality of search results appears to have declined over time, although promoted results and advertising take up a larger portion of the user experience.
But despite the search giant’s ubiquity, you’re not stuck with Google. There are a number of alternative search engines. None of them are perfect, but each has positive aspects that are worth considering. Here are five alternatives that will satisfy most people. And remember: you don’t have to rely entirely on one of them. In fact, it’s probably best to try a few different options and even continue using different search engines for different purposes in the future.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is the oldest privacy-focused Google alternative and remains one of the best in terms of features. The service is free and relies on advertising revenue, but these ads are entirely based on what you’re searching for right now, meaning you’re not tracked long-term between searches.
Being a huge nerd, I love that you can view search results entirely using your keyboard – just type something into the search bar, use the up and down arrow keys to navigate to any selection on the results page, and press Enter. to Open it up. There are also bangs , which allow you to search other sites directly from the DuckDuckGo search bar—for example, typing “!w” at the beginning of your query will launch a Wikipedia search, bypassing DuckDuckGo entirely. There are over 13,000 of these shortcuts, useful for direct searches on everything from Reddit to WolframAlpha.
The service has maintained a good reputation for privacy, at least from the search engine’s perspective; There has been some controversy over the DuckDuckGo browser , which blocks most tracking, but not Microsoft’s, due to an agreement between the two companies. Some users are also not thrilled with the Chat tab, which integrates with OpenAI. Notably, AI recommendations do not appear in standard searches on DuckDuckGo.
Kagi
Kagi is a paid search engine without any advertising. The theory is that the subscription model allows you to offer quality search results without any temptation on the part of developers to dilute them with advertising. The engine has earned praise from Cory Doctorow and Jason Kebler of 404 Media , which isn’t too bad.
One of the features that people like is the ability to block matches to URLs you don’t like so they never appear in search results, which is useful if you notice that a particular website is consistently garbage. There’s also a podcast search tool that I haven’t seen anywhere else. The main disadvantage is that you have to pay. Plans start at $5 per month, but that only gets you 300 searches. Unlimited search starts at $10 per month. You can try the service yourself and decide if it’s worth paying for – there is a free version, but the total number of searches is limited to 100.
It’s worth noting that there has been some controversy surrounding the company, mostly related to the way it is being run , as well as the roughly $2 million in investment money it recently received after boasting about bootstrapping. Additionally, the CEO gets irritated by any criticism the company receives . Other than that, the search engine itself seems to work well, so give it a try if you’re willing to spend the money.
Brave
Brave Search is a search engine from the Brave browser team that is known for its built-in ad blocking. It differs from DuckDuckGo in that it has its own search index built from the ground up (DuckDuckGo combines its own index with data from Bing and many other companies).
Brave also offers a feature called Goggles , which allows you to use custom filters that rank media up or down based on factors like topic and political beliefs. I found some of it too simplistic – most websites aren’t the same thing – but you can check the code to see what’s taken into account in any Goggle, so at least it’s all very transparent. There’s also a built-in AI engine that you can tap into – just press up after entering a search query to enable the feature for a specific search. The main drawback, in my opinion, is the lack of any map functions.
Brave has a decent reputation, although the CEO has a controversial history and the company has been accused of selling copyrighted data for AI training , so take all that into consideration.
Ecosia
Ecosia is a free, ad-supported search engine that donates all of its profits to fight climate change. They are very transparent about this – you can read the financial statements for yourself . The search itself is supported by Bing and works quite well.
Perplexity.ai
Confusion is a completely different beast. Instead of placing AI-generated text at the top of the results, it basically offers only AI-generated text, with links serving as citations for all points made. You can ask a question and then answer it, which can be useful for refining your results, and clicking on a link will give you some interesting links. I find Perplexity to be better at recognizing and understanding satire and jokes than Google’s AI bot, although you should obviously test it out for yourself and see what happens.
Clearly, anyone concerned about artificial intelligence should not use Perplexity, and there is no doubt that the browser will have privacy issues in the long run – it has raised $165 million in venture capital, which won’t happen if investors don’t expect it huge income, and we all know what such things usually lead to . However, for now it is an interesting tool that is ad-free and may be useful for some queries.
Or use Google differently
If you don’t want to give up Google search results but hate what the service has become, there are a few options. Startpage is a privacy-focused service that uses Google’s search index to provide results without tracking. There is also UDM14.com , a simple site that redirects you to a Google web page. Both URLs are worth bookmarking in case you still feel the need to Google.