StartPage beats Google Search in test. Reason? Privacy

[harlan4096]

When you asked a representative number of Internet users about the search engine that they prefer, you'd probably end up with Google at the top as it is the most widely used search engine in the world (with the exception of some regions).

The result would be different if you'd ask a group of privacy conscious users. Back in 2013, I proclaimed that it was time to switch to the search engines DuckDuckGo or Startpage.

The German customer tests behemoth Stiftung Warentest tested search engines in its latest print issue and concluded that Google provided the best search results. Google's search engine did not come first though as it was surpassed by Startpage. The test focused on German language versions of search engines.

I bought the (German) test online to find out more about test criteria and how individual search engines fared in the test.

First, the basics: ten search engines were analyzed by Stiftung Warentest including Google Search, Bing, Qwant, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, and Yahoo Search. The testers analyzed the quality of search results, usability of the desktop and mobile website, and privacy.

The testers ran 50 searches on each search engine divided into 26 general searches, 8 trending searches, 8 image and 8 video searches. Searches included phrases with spelling mistakes and words with different meanings. Usability on desktop computers and mobile devices was analyzed next to that.

Search quality made up 60% of the score and usability 40%. Critical privacy issues, e.g. the sending of data irrelevant to searches on mobile devices, or issues in the privacy policy could impact the overall score negatively (but not positively).  

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[jasonX]

Interesting read there! Will try it out!

Back again, just a rough check here. Tried to use StartPage to search "Geeks For Your Information Forum" and hen compare it to Google / Bing. See images below.