Amid Google’s upcoming search changes and a massive AI push, users are losing the familiar blue links page that surfaces related pages when you search the internet.
Google is instead pushing its AI mode designed to deliver an answer that may or may not be accurate, meaning you have to do the extra legwork of fact checking its answer.
Whether you want to keep the familiar link results page, seek to boost your privacy, or just interested in an independent service, there are many alternative search engines you might be interested in.
Alternative search engines
Kagi (paid, for power users)
Kagi is an ad-free subscription-funded search engine that provides a completely private experience.
Since it’s a subscription model, Kagi has no incentive to sell your user data, track your usage, or optimise for clicks, instead offering a strong privacy policy that keeps your searches private and anonymous.
Plans start at USD $5 per month for 300 search queries, or USD $10 per month for unlimited search. Annual pricing offers a 10 percent discount.
Kagi provides a plan limited to 100 searches so you can try it out and get used to it before committing to a paid plan.
Many people might balk at the idea of a paid search engine, but the reality is that if you’re not paying with money, you’re paying with your data.
Advertisers spend hundreds of billions of dollars to influence your search results, and Google results these days display a high amount of AI-generated SEO spam; Kagi has no reason to make these compromises.
Kagi says its results continually improve and users I’ve spoken to report excellent result quality for technical and niche queries.
DuckDuckGo (free, easiest switch)
DuckDuckGo is one of the best-known privacy-first search engines. As a company, it offers a mobile browser app, desktop browser extension, and email protection services.
The platform uses results from Bing and other APIs alongside its own web crawler.
Some useful features DuckDuckGo offers is “Bang” shortcuts; for example, typing “!w” in a query will search Wikipedia, while typing “!ste” will search Steam. Some Bangs can redirect you to the specific entry from your search rather than just a results page, saving you time.
DuckDuckGo also offers an instant answers section to speed up calculations, show a calendar, provide a stopwatch, and more features under the Answer tab.
If you’re looking for top privacy, DuckDuckGo might not be the best option as it still loads trackers and Microsoft’s infrastructure is used to generate results. However, it’s generally considered a step up in privacy compared to Google.
Mojeek (free, fully independent indexing)
Mojeek is a fully independent search engine that has built its own web crawler and index from scratch. That means it doesn’t rely on any other search provider for results.
The upside is a high level of privacy, but the downside is that Mojeek’s results can miss content or yield fewer options.
It’s free to try, so it might be worth giving it a shot to see if it suits you. For high-security use cases where you don’t want a search to pass through any US infrastructure, Mojeek is the best option.
What’s the catch?
None of these options is a perfect drop-in replacement for everyone. Image search and Maps integration are still better experiences on Google.
However, for day-to-day search these options are as good or better than Google. Kagi is great for cutting through the noise of advertisement and SEO junk results, DuckDuckGo is an easy-to-use alternative, and Mojeek is the most independent option on the list.
With the existing state and upcoming changes to Google, there’s never been a better time to check out alternatives.
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