DuckDuckGo, Startpage and Ixquick search engines are doing well

Martin Brinkmann
Dec 9, 2015
Updated • Dec 9, 2015
Internet, Search
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35

The search engines DuckDuckGo, Startpage and Ixquick are doing better than ever according to statistics released by DuckDuckgo and Surfboard Holding BV.

DuckDuckGo traffic climbed from an average of 7.1 million daily direct searches to more than 11.2 million daily searches in year's time, and Startpage/Ixquick too reported an all-time high on November 30, 2015 when daily searches crossed the 6 million mark for the first time.

All three search engines saw a huge jump in daily searches after the surveillance revelations hit the news in mid-2013.

Startpage and Ixquick are developed and maintained by the same company, that is why only combined stats are available for them.

DuckDuckGo

The search engine uses data from other search engines such as Bing to populate its results. It makes money from advertisement, but without the tracking that is usually involved.

DuckDuckGo is a privacy-focused search engine that does not track its users, does not collect personal information or shares them. The search engine does not store user agents or IP addresses, and does not set cookies on the searcher's device by default.

The team that built the search engine implemented other features, search leakage prevention for instance on top of that.

Search leakage blocks the used search term from being submitted to sites the user clicks on in the search results.

Another features of interest is the !bang syntax which provides searchers with access to direct commands, for instance to redirect searches to a specific site such as Amazon, Wikipedia or Ghacks, to translate text instantly, or to look up other information such as the latest weather report.

Startpage / Ixquick

Startpage and Ixquick are owned by the same company, a fact that is hard to miss when you compare the layouts of both search engines.In fact, Startpage is powered by Ixquick and the sole reason it was created was because of its name. The company earns revenue from advertisement but carefully safeguards user privacy.

startpage ixquick

Ixquick merges results from multiple search engines and displays results based on popularity. It awards stars to results and displays the results that were awarded the most stars in the comparison.

Startpage on the other hand takes results from Google only.

The search engine does not collect or share personal information including user IP addresses or tracking cookies.

The search engine does not offer nearly as many extras as DuckDuckGo. One that needs to be mentioned is the proxy that it offers. It enables you to click through to sites listed in the search results without revealing your identity at all.

Sites receive information such as your computer's IP address or operating system on connect, and this is prevented if you use the proxy provided by the search engine.

While the rise is impressive, these search engines are still relatively small when compared to Google and even Bing, Yahoo Search or local search engines like Baidu or Yandex.

Now You: What's your preferred search engine and why?

Summary
DuckDuckGo, Startpage and Ixquick search engines are doing well
Article Name
DuckDuckGo, Startpage and Ixquick search engines are doing well
Description
The privacy-focused search engines DuckDuckGo, Startpage and Ixquick reported all-time highs in December 2015.
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Comments

  1. ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
    Reply

    Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on August 4, 2012 at 7:57 pm
      Reply

      Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.

    2. Leonidas Burton said on September 4, 2023 at 4:51 am
      Reply

      I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
      http://www.google.com/saved

  2. VioletMoon said on August 16, 2023 at 5:26 pm
    Reply

    @Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!

  3. Karl said on August 17, 2023 at 10:36 pm
    Reply

    @Martin

    The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
    https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/

    Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.

  4. Anonymous said on August 25, 2023 at 11:44 am
    Reply

    Omg a badge!!!
    Some tangible reward lmao.

    It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.

  5. Scroogled said on August 25, 2023 at 10:57 pm
    Reply

    With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.

    1. lollmaoeven said on August 27, 2023 at 6:24 am
      Reply

      This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)

  6. El Duderino said on August 25, 2023 at 11:14 pm
    Reply

    Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.

    And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.

  7. John G. said on August 26, 2023 at 1:29 am
    Reply

    First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm

    For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[

  8. Kalmly said on August 26, 2023 at 4:42 pm
    Reply

    Yes. Please. Fix the comments.

  9. Kim Schmidt said on September 3, 2023 at 3:42 pm
    Reply

    With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.

    Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.

    The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.

    If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.

    And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.

  10. Anonymous said on September 28, 2023 at 8:19 am
    Reply

    When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?

  11. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 9:36 am
    Reply

    Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.

    I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.

    1. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 11:01 am
      Reply

      Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  12. RIP said on September 28, 2023 at 10:48 am
    Reply

    Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to

  13. Mystique said on September 28, 2023 at 12:13 pm
    Reply

    Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
    Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.

  14. justputthispostanywhere said on September 29, 2023 at 3:59 am
    Reply

    I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/

    My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.

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