Search engine Ixquick.eu redirects to Startpage.com
The search engine Ixquick.eu will start to redirect to the search engine Startpage.com later today.
The privacy-focused search engines are maintained by the privately owned Dutch company Surfboard Holdings B.V. One of the company's main goals is to deliver "the most relevant search results under the largest possible umbrella of privacy" to users.
The motivation behind the move is to focus on a single brand and domain to increase efficiency.
We reviewed Ixquick Search back in 2012 for the first time and followed the rise of privacy-focused search engines like Ixquick, Startpage or DuckDuckGo since.
Ixquick and Startpage used two different sources for search results initially. Whereas Startpage used Google as its source, Ixquick used a number of sources and used ranking algorithms to rank the data it retrieved from its sources.
Ixquick was merged with Startpage back in 2016. While the service maintained its own domain address, name and design, it delivered the same set of results as Startpage as of 2016.
The redirect of the Ixquick.eu domain to Startpage.com marks the next step in the process. Ixquick will redirect to Startpage automatically; the change won't impact search results, as those are already identical.
In fact, the only change that Ixquick users may notice is that searches run on startpage.com now and that the search engine's name changed from "Startpage by ixquick" to "Startpage".
Company engineers have implemented the quick answers feature on Startpage which returns direct answers or information to queries directly. Startpage plans to expand the functionality by adding more sources in the coming months.
The company has big plans for Startpage. It plans to launch a new look and new features this year, and improve existing features such as the service's privacy proxy which you may use to access results through a proxy to protect your privacy.
Startpage announced the change last week on the official company blog
Now You: Which search engines do you use?
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- Use the Startpage Proxy to browse websites anonymously
I miss ixquick.eu too. Startpage just does not always have any relevant results. It is a shame that we no longer get a choice.
Oh, what a bummer!
There were many things I could only find with the search result aggregator ixquick.eu. Really sad to see this happen.
Ixquick.eu says
“Ixquick.eu (formerly ixquick.com) is a metasearch engine that uses results from various search engines, including Gigablast and Yandex, which will vary based on language, search category, time of search, and speed of response. The list of search engines used is not a set list.”
“When you use the Ixquick.eu search engine, you are searching many popular search engines simultaneously and anonymously. Google and Yahoo are not used.”
Startpage uses mostly google searches/results. What was the point of the merger? Are there going to be options to turn off google, yahoo, and bing search results?
You mean, an option to use a search engine other than Google as the backend? Apparently, no.
I mainly use Qwant which suits my requirements. Occasionally I use StartPage.
The light version https://lite.qwant.com/ seems to work without javascript. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631473 for a discussion about qwant and qwant lite.
I beg to differ on your comment about Identical search results on Startpage and IxQuick-eu. I used both until the redirection. Frequently they gave different results.
Searx.me is good. An open source metasearch engine. I use Google, Startpage,Searx.me and Findx alternately, hoping profiling me is more difficult.
Now are we sure want to rely on google always and forever??
Google is a gigantic target for censorship and abusive IP laws, all around the world. Look up ‘google censorship’.
Since we rely on google so much. Bing is the only alternative search engine to google and it’s just as bad.
Startpage only returns one page of results for me. That started several months ago.
Startpage has always mirrored google;
therefore when looking for different results
use DDG or Dogpile, Keep using your Noscript & Ublock’O to keep an eye on what “everything” connects to.
@Martin Bit OT, but have you had a look on Qwant yet?
Googles search results, particularly when it comes to searching out more obscure and specific information is getting consistently worse. While they are working more and more to directing you to ‘something’ that hopefully relates to your search, those results are increasingly what they want to or are paid to show you as opposed to what you want to find.
Unfortunately more and more search enginges like this are bowing to google and just becoming a decorative front end to their results. I continue to seek out engines that have independant datasets and/or algorithms to at least complement the largely garbage results returned by google.
Ixquick.eu says
“Ixquick.eu (formerly ixquick.com) is a metasearch engine that uses results from various search engines, including Gigablast and Yandex, which will vary based on language, search category, time of search, and speed of response. The list of search engines used is not a set list.”
“When you use the Ixquick.eu search engine, you are searching many popular search engines simultaneously and anonymously. Google and Yahoo are not used.”
Startpage uses mostly google searches/results. What was the point of the merger? Are there going to be options to turn off google, yahoo, and bing search results?
the startpage was OK some time ago. Today, he has problems with searching for photos. And with the simplest questions. He shows the picture of animals and claims he did not find anything.
Hi liptek. Startpage.com image search was upgraded not long ago. Did you read the ghacks article on it at https://www.ghacks.net/2017/03/24/exclusive-preview-of-startpages-new-image-search-tools/
One good feature that ixquick.eu had was the orange “Official Site” tag which seems to have been dropped from startpage.com. DuckDuckGo have also dropped this feature that I thought was a good security feature.
I agree with Liz about DDG’s !Bangs and a lot of people’s strange love for them. A lot of their !Bang sites do not have HTTP or HTTPS before them, plus have they been checked that they are not malicious sites? What happens if someone gets a virus, malware or ransonware from one of them? Is DuckDuckGo to blame or liable? Surely for a site like DuckDuckGo, who promote privacy, any sites they promote, especially their !Bangs, SHOULD have a HTTPS before their name to ensure privacy?
I’ve been using SearX for the past week and I’ve been liking it a lot. I like the concept behind it and the fact that I could even host my own instance if I wanted to. Before that I used StartPage for quite some time but I started having some loading problems with it that I didn’t bother to fix so I made the change. StartPage is still a great search engine and I usually tell people to switch to it instead of Google or DuckDuckGo.
Start Page keeps setting itself as my home page. It is hugely irritating. It has been doing that for months. I’m guessing that now it will be even worse.
Hi kalmly. There have been reports like this for DuckDuckGo, too. See: https://duck.co/forum/thread/7337/duckduckgo-virus-malware-browser-hijacker-i-f
This is not done by the legitimate companies. You may have a virus.
It’s a pity that Ixquick is gone.
From Startpage’s “About Us” page: “Commercialization only takes place through the use of – clearly labeled – sponsored results.” However, I can’t find details about the exact nature of Startpage’s deal with Google. The must offer Google something, but what? Data?
RTFM
https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/147/22/why-does-google-let-startpage-access-their-search-results
https://www.startpage.com/eng/privacy-policy.html
Ixquick.com used Google Search (as Startpage does), but Ixquick.eu used other sources. So… this is a major change.
Not in the past two years.
Actually, it did. It’s been maybe a month or two since the last time I used it.
Check the date:
https://support.ixquick.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/288/0/which-search-engines-does-ixquickeu-use
Though, it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s gone now :(
What @chesscanoe said. Few days ago a search for Ðни Лорак used to return on StartPage 13 (thirteen) results, which rendered it completely inapt imo, and on Ixquick 300 000+ results. However I think they’re working on it, as now StartPage also returns 408 056 results.
Well, I think it’s a good idea to merger the two, less confusion for the end user. Now do something about the image search ffs, all images are saved as “serveimage.jpg”! They might as well remove image search capability enirely if they don’t retain the original file name.
Startpage produces far better results and has more options than DuckDuckGo but for some reason DDG seems to get all the love.
If you don’t like DDG’s native results (generally it works fine for me) you can quickly add the bang !g to retrieve anonymized google (US) results. That’s why it gets my love. There are lots of bangs that are really helpful.
DuckDuckGo bangs do not provide any privacy protection themselves.
If you want google results in privacy, you can use the sp! bang to get Startpage.com. Startpage.com delivers Google search results in privacy.
IMHO DDG produces better results than Startpage. Also, the amount of options is the same with both engines, although DDG has a bit more options when it comes to theming.
Hi Heimen. Startpage.com and DuckDuckGo offer different results in privacy:
* Startpage.com delivers mainly Google search results in privacy.
* DuckDuckGo delivers mainly Yahoo /Bing search results.
With these options, there’s no reason to have to go directly to Google or Yahoo any more!
startpage.com uses german censorship filters and does not inform the user (unlike google at least does). And there seems to be no way to disable this – with google at least I can disable them.
Did not check for other censorship filters (google also has EU, DMCA and a hidden one).
So no thank you.
Ben, Startpage.com does not censor search results. Please contact the Startpage.com tech team so we can look into what might be happening: Support@startpage.com
You got mail with the screenshots showing that the BPjM filter is applied to german IPs.
I do not understand why, but for me a search using Windows 10 latest x64 and Chrome x64 beta yields different results than Startpage; either can yield “better” results.