Search Engines That Do Not Track You

Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex - all the major search engines track your search history and build profiles on you, serving different results based on your search history. Usually your searches are saved along with the date and time of the search, some information about your computer (e.g. your IP address, User agent and often a unique identifier stored in a browser cookie), and if you are logged in, your account information (e.g. name and email address). With only the timestamp and computer information, your searches can often be traced directly to you. With the additional account information, they are associated directly with you.

Search engines that don't track your searches include:

DuckDuckGo - https://duckduckgo.com/

Startpage - https://www.startpage.com/

Ixquick - https://www.ixquick.com/

Disconnect Search - https://search.disconnect.me/

Lukol - http://www.lukol.com/

MetaGer - https://metager.de/en  

If you are concerned with your on-line privacy, you should start using one of the above sites for your searches.

* The DuckDuckGo privacy page (https://duckduckgo.com/privacy) provides a detailed discussion about why you should be concerned about search engine tracking.

Startpage and Ixquick  are run by the same company. In the past, Startpage returned Google results, while Ixquick returned results from a number of other search engines, but not Google. The two services have now been combined, and both return identical Google results. Although no longer actively supported, the old Ixquick metasearch engine is still available at Ixquick.eu. Interestingly, despite no longer being actively supported, Startpage has recently removed Yahoo results from the legacy search engine. This is in response to news that Yahoo has been helping the NSA spy on its users.