Startpage search engine results

[pkondo]

I use NordVPN and I just got an email recommending both DuckDuckGo and Startpage. I use DDG but hadn’t heard of Startpage. Interesting. I’ve attached a screenshot of the email.

When I searched on Startpage in this forum, I saw two previous references.

[dustinknopoff]

It’s interesting. I tend to use it as my fallback when ddg doesn’t find what I’m looking for. Prefixing the search term with !s gets me there easy. Start page is supposed to be the same search engine from google focused on the EU and without tracking and stuff. Whether it actually is that, I’m not sure. My biggest gripe is they default to open in new tab for search results.

[bowline]

Startpage is great. It folds in some results from Google, but Google only knows Startpage is making the search request.

I discussed it here a month ago (and included comparative screenshots with Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo):

Is my iPhone spying on me?

DDG has gotten much better but it still falls behind if you do targeted searches based on time, or do a lot of image searches, or reverse image searches, etc etc. I’ve found that Bing is surprisingly good. So is https://www.startpage.com which is as security-focused as DuckDuckGo, but also anonymously blends in Google search results (Google gets the request from StartPage so they don’t know which user is requesting) for good results as well. When searching ‘macpowerusers’ Google and StartPage…

[Quahog]

I started using Startpage after reading @bowline’s recommendation a month ago, and it’s very good. I have DDG as my default browser, but very much prefer the Startpage results. I should change it to default.

I recommend giving it a try.

[bowline]

One nice advantage of StartPage over DuckDuckGo is that you can search within the last year. For some reason DDG limits you to past day/week/month, but I find I use Past Year quite a bit, especially when looking for product reviews.

StartPage also lets you custom-configure how you want results, and it gives you a custom URL to use (instead of sticking a cookie in your browser): it lets you configure search mode, theme, number of results, and more. This is also useful if you don’t want to make Startpage your default search engine - you can just bookmark the link and use it when desired.

On one of my browsers I use DDG as the main search engine but I made my custom StartPage page my ‘home page’ so StartPage is just a click away in the Bookmarks Bar.

[SteveH]

What do you mean by “blends in” Google results? I thought they flat out used Google.

[bowline]

While Google is the backbone of Startpage, and Google and Startpage have a contract agreement with each other to obtain Google search results in privacy, Startpage also adds in results from additional sources, including things like Instant Answers.

[RichardC]

I missed previous discussions of StartPage. Just downloaded it on my iPad. With several quick searches and two minutes of experience it looks promising.

Thanks