My Journey with Private Search Engines: Why I Chose Brave Search

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. My Journey with DuckDuckGo
3. StartPage: A Private Proxy for Google Results
4. Search.me: A Transparent Option for Power Users
5. Mojeek: An Independent Index
6. Brave Search: My New Choice for a Privacy Search Engine
7. Conclusion
8. FAQs

My Journey with Private Search Engines

As someone who values privacy, I have spent years testing various private search engines to find the one that best suits my needs. In this article, I will share my experiences with several search engines, including DuckDuckGo, StartPage, Search.me, Mojeek, and Brave Search. I will discuss the pros and cons of each engine and explain why I ultimately settled on Brave Search as my new go-to search engine.

My Journey with DuckDuckGo

My journey with private search engines began in 2018 when I started using DuckDuckGo. I was initially drawn to DuckDuckGo because of its accessibility and simple privacy features. I especially loved their "bangs," which allow You to conveniently send your search to countless sites. However, I was Never satisfied with the search results, as DuckDuckGo primarily uses Bing, which I am not a fan of.

While some people love DuckDuckGo's results, I found myself using the bangs by default before even attempting to see what DuckDuckGo would give me. DuckDuckGo was working against me and not with me, and I knew something needed to change.

StartPage: A Private Proxy for Google Results

I then moved over to StartPage, a search engine that privately proxies Google results. This transition happened around the time StartPage was partially acquired by System1, which I didn't find to be a big deal since nothing changed about their privacy policy or how they conducted themselves internally. In my opinion, they did an okay job of clearing up people's concerns, and I even got to sit down with their CEO to talk about those concerns, where I left feeling pretty good about everything.

Since StartPage proxies Google results, I was getting the results I wanted in a more private manner, and because of this, I was much happier with StartPage than DuckDuckGo. However, I couldn't use it anymore since they started getting stricter with blacklisting IP addresses tied to VPN and Tor users. So, I had to choose between private searches or privacy from my ISP, and I wasn't willing to make that compromise when there were so many search engines available to me.

Search.me: A Transparent Option for Power Users

I tried Search.me again, an instance of search that met a search engine where you customize the results yourself. It's extremely powerful and is the only open-source and self-hostable option I tried. However, it was just too much for me. I was spending more time configuring the search engine to work well than actually doing quality searches, and this is another example of a tool that just wasn't working for me but against me.

Mojeek: An Independent Index

While Mojeek is objectively probably the most transparent and most private provider I'm covering today, I just wasn't interested in going that route since I'm all about simplicity in my privacy journey. With really no more options at the time, I went back to good old DuckDuckGo.

Now, I really tried to enjoy it. I would put those Google bangs, then stop and convince myself to give DuckDuckGo a shot for the search. Half the time, I'd end up having to use the bang anyway because the results were so bad. I just do not like DuckDuckGo results, and I don't consider myself a bad searcher. I have Read books on this stuff and have no issues with most search engines. I just don't find the results Relevant to what I'm looking for a lot of times.

Brave Search: My New Choice for a Privacy Search Engine

Until Brave Search was released, offering not a meta search engine but their own index, which is very unique. It also just so happens that DuckDuckGo's reliance on Bing had become more obvious with several big stories hitting the news that I'm sure many of you heard of, and during that time, Brave Search results kept improving.

I can confidently say that Brave Search is my new choice for a privacy search engine for myself. Privacy-wise, it lines up similarly to the alternatives, and I don't find the results as good as Google, but it's only improving. They've added new features that I feel are making searches better, and I do find the results better than every other privacy search engine I tested, with the exception of StartPage, whose I like the best since it's just Google.

They support bangs just like DuckDuckGo, which is like my favorite thing about DuckDuckGo, so that's a big plus. Brave indexes its own results, unlike meta search engines like DuckDuckGo, which just give you search results from someone else. Brave is still using an unknown percentage of results from other search engines as of today, but they're slowly phasing this out as their own index begins to improve over time.

The reason this is really important is that I don't think meta search engines reliant on big tech companies are the long-term solution. DuckDuckGo and StartPage are fantastic at giving people private results from being in Google, respectively, but in regards to offering independent results, Brave and Mojeek have the right idea of offering their own independent index to avoid lots of the issues that services like DuckDuckGo are facing that are likely to only get worse as time goes on.

Brave Search has never blacklisted me once, but neither has any search engine here except StartPage, so it works fine for me in Tor and with my VPN. I genuinely like using Brave Search. I find the interface modern, appreciate the features they give me, it feels smooth to use, and it's just a fantastic experience.

The one thing that's severely incomplete for me is image search, which as far as I know and as far as my tests are showing, it's just 100% Bing images like DuckDuckGo, which means I'm no worse off than I was when I was using DuckDuckGo, but with the better experience everywhere else.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I have tested several private search engines and have settled on Brave Search as my new go-to search engine. However, I recognize that most search engines bring something valuable to the table, and it's important to recognize and appreciate that. DuckDuckGo offers its collection of results with bangs, StartPage offers more private Google search, Search.me offers a transparent option for power users, Mojeek offers an independent index, and the list goes on.

Almost all are more private than Google or Bing, so it's normally a net win for most people. I just found that Brave Search works for me and is only improving the more I use it, and it's honestly the happiest I've been with any search engine the last several years on this really long and frustrating journey.

FAQs

Q: What is a private search engine?

A: A private search engine is a search engine that prioritizes user privacy by not tracking or storing user data.

Q: What are bangs?

A: Bangs are shortcuts that allow you to search specific websites directly from the search bar.

Q: What is a meta search engine?

A: A meta search engine is a search engine that aggregates search results from multiple search engines.

Q: What is an independent index?

A: An independent index is a search engine that indexes its own results rather than relying on results from other search engines.

Q: What is Brave Search?

A: Brave Search is a privacy-focused search engine that offers its own independent index and supports bangs.