With so many individuals scouring the net every day on the lookout for useful, quick, and correct info, it is smart that there are plenty of great search engines that may assist join folks with the assets they want.
Regardless of greater than a dozen commendable search engines like google and yahoo defecting or merging into greater gamers over time, there are some which have continued to face up to the check of time and entice thousands and thousands of searches each month.
A kind of is Startpage, a lesser-known search engine that has been thriving for greater than 20 years – and supplying the web with search outcomes akin to the main search engine, Google.
What Is Startpage?
Startpage is a Dutch search engine that’s propped up by its robust privateness options, but additionally proudly stands by the standard of its search outcomes as among the many greatest on this planet.
That’s as a result of the search engine actually serves Google Search outcomes to its customers (and pays Google an undisclosed amount of money to take action) whereas defending consumer knowledge and eradicating all types of monitoring to make sure most privateness.
The search engine is classed as a proxy web site, since customers can use the platform’s Nameless View to view search outcomes by a proxy server and add much more privateness safety to their expertise in the event that they’d like.
What started as an online listing in 2002 would evolve just a few alternative ways over the subsequent few years – together with mirroring a web site it will ultimately merge with, Ixquick – earlier than quickly turning into its personal distinctive search engine entity that started strictly serving Google’s search outcomes with out the personalization or advert monitoring.
Startpage and Ixquick would merge in 2016 below the Startpage identify, and, regardless of some preliminary privateness considerations surrounding a scarcity of transparency at first of the merger, Startpage introduced the coupling of the businesses wouldn’t change the model’s mission to guard consumer privateness and nonetheless ship high-quality search outcomes.
And being headquartered within the Netherlands has frequently allowed Startpage to bypass any invasive legal guidelines that will put customers in danger whereas nonetheless serving top-quality search outcomes.
It’s additionally a multi-language search engine, permitting searches in 82 totally different languages whereas additionally providing a number of verticals for looking out particularly for pictures and movies.
Who Makes use of Startpage?
Whereas Startpage is out there for use by anybody on this planet totally free (as long as they use one of many supported languages to go looking), there are some more-likely customers of the search engine, which has emerged as a formidable participant during the last seven years.
The primary (and doubtless most blatant) group of individuals opting to make use of Startpage often are those that are involved or keen about privateness.
They might get pleasure from Google and the expertise it gives, however don’t assist what can appear overly invasive on the subject of capturing and using consumer knowledge – one thing Google admits it does, however allegedly within the identify of bettering the search expertise.
On the opposite aspect of that, there are additionally individuals who simply don’t care if the adverts they see are focused or not. And if they will keep away from having their knowledge taken by an organization, they do.
Probably the most standard causes others decide out of utilizing Google and search for a special, extra obscure search engine to make use of of their each day lives is they’re, kind of, usually not a fan of Google.
This could possibly be as a result of Google is likely one of the richest corporations on the planet, has been identified to tip-toe a wide range of ethics tightropes, and, as a pioneer of the expertise business, can simply appear extra involved about producing income than it does bettering humankind.
No matter the reason being for somebody on the lookout for another search engine to make use of as an alternative of Google, it means a chance for all the opposite platforms within the area.
What Is Startpage Good For?
Startpage is nice at doing each of its foremost aims as a enterprise.
It’s a search engine. The job of a search engine is to assist folks discover what they’re on the lookout for – oftentimes with restricted info or path – rapidly, simply, and precisely.
It’s principally recreating the search expertise of the preferred search engine on this planet – and its top-of-the-line expertise and algorithms – with none consumer personalization.
Startpage has a recipe for achievement if it might successfully present one thing else customers need as well as: privateness.
The idea and upholding of privateness is Startpage’s worth proposition as a model, so it should do that properly to take care of a decent status.
So, though customers might miss out on that extra customized total search expertise at the price of privateness safety, they’re nonetheless getting a high-quality expertise that’s in line with the standard of different search engines like google and yahoo.
After all, for those who add your location to the platform for some elevated personalization, you’ll get that even-more-useful search expertise and nonetheless have very restricted knowledge taken and saved.
Is Startpage As Good As Google?
Whereas Startpage is principally a privacy-bound regurgitator of Google Search outcomes, it depends upon what standards you’d use to contemplate if Startpage is pretty much as good – or higher than – Google.
The consumer expertise is totally different in a wide range of methods, and since there isn’t any personalization for the outcomes or sort of outcomes served to a consumer, Startpage is doubtlessly lacking part of the equation that has helped Google turn out to be the highly effective tech firm that it’s.
Startpage should still serve adverts to its customers – it’s a for-profit firm that does generate income from search adverts – however these adverts are served strictly from contextual clues given by a consumer’s search question, not from historic or conduct knowledge collected by the engine (like Google and different standard search engines like google and yahoo).
So it’s actually concerning the high quality of adverts served on the search engine outcomes pages (SERPs), not simply in the event that they exist on these platforms.
Startpage additionally doesn’t assist Google’s Featured Snippet function – that’s, the “scraping” of internet pages and content material to serve particular excerpts from internet pages immediately on the prime of its SERPs.
Startpage does, nevertheless, present its personal informational breakout on the appropriate aspect of the SERP identical to Google does, and it’s principally Wikipedia-generated info that builds out its Data Panel (additionally identical to Google).
Google is an promoting firm producing a whole lot of billions of {dollars} annually.
And, whereas Startpage generates cash from promoting too, it’s producing far lower than Google – nearer to 7 to 10 million a 12 months.
Startpage Vs. DuckDuckGo
Startpage isn’t the one standard search engine propping up its privateness safety as a search engine, both.
DuckDuckGo has been doing so since 2010.
This privacy-focused search engine’s greatest distinction in comparison with Startpage is the way it generates its search outcomes.
Whereas Startpage faucets into Google’s API and presents an identical expertise to Google with out the personalization, DuckDuckGo presents its personal distinctive search outcomes and platform expertise.
Along with its personal proprietary internet crawler, DuckDuckGo makes use of a wide range of different websites’ APIs to reply search queries, in addition to different search companions like Bing, to make sure it’s delivering a good expertise and good outcomes.
In comparison with Startpage, DuckDuckGo has actually gotten much more publicity and development in recognition during the last decade, however that goes past the services themselves.
This contains variations in advertising budgets, firm sizes, and a lot extra.
However DuckDuckGo nonetheless holds about 2% of the search market share, whereas Startpage is holding down a sliver (0.06% in America).
General Outlook On Startpage The Search Engine
The thought might not sound groundbreaking and even essential, however Startpage is a simple, high quality search engine providing a safer expertise than different platforms whereas capturing digital zero consumer knowledge.
Whereas it received’t be probably that Startpage strikes in as a respectable risk to Google anytime quickly, it will likely be fascinating to see how the search engine’s privateness mannequin continues to assist it reach a aggressive area that now very a lot contains social media platforms, retail websites, and a lot extra.
For an expertise targeted on privateness that can be devoted to delivering high quality search outcomes, strive Startpage.
It feels quite a bit like what a search engine ought to be like: good however basic and never too invasive.
You simply might prefer it.
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Featured Picture: Luis Molinero/Shutterstock
