StartPage

Google dropped the plus sign operator in 2011, but StartPage never adapted to this change, i. E., StartPage helpfully inserts a plus sign in front of each keyword. Hopefully the people who maintain StartPage will some day figure this out!

1-fast
2-Similar to Google for search results
3-Still had to weed through Amazon, and advertiser ads before I got a real result.
4-Started having printer and text font issues--not respecting size to fit-like crosswords-1page didn't fit. That's on 5 PC's, 5 Users--all different types. Probably their updates-that I wasn't told about.
5 -Switched back to Google.

Very disappointed in StartPage lately. Basically, the results HAVE NOTHING to do with my query. I have been using StartPage mostly for over a year and then off/on for 3 years. The longer I use it the worse it gets in finding relevant results. So my last query was for driving directions from point A to point B, and the results were ridiculous - how to drive from Pittsburgh to a Baseball Stadium. (I'm on the west coast) Or how to drive from Point A to Point X. You get the picture.

It just bugs me that StartPage, just like the DuckDuckGo homepage, is SO long and they got that arrow pointing downwards. You mean I have to look at that arrow every time I view my homepage. That killed it for me with both these homepage's. Was hoping to escape the Google homepage and all things Google and YouTube after their increasing censorship, but StartPage is not the answer I see.

But I find you even more biased than google, I did a simple search on, Is Islam a relgion or an ideal and your search brought up only things on how it is a religion of peace? And it brought up none of the bad aspects of Islam at all, I had to go to Yahoo and Bing for any kind of real search or information.

Startpage is a trojan horse. They pretend to care about your privacy. They don't. If you use an anonymizing proxy, they block you from searching. They are big tech creeps in disguise. Use DuckDuckGo instead.

Users who use anonymizing proxies receive the following error message when trying to use Startpage, a supposedly "private" search engine:

We apologize for the inconvenience: to prevent possible abuse of the Startpage.com service, your Internet connection has been prevented from accessing it at this time.

This happens when a large number of search requests are received from one's Internet connection in a short amount of time -- for example, if you are using "screen-scraping" software, or if you are sharing a connection with many people, perhaps through a proxy service.

Otherwise, if you have received this message in error, please help us in investigation by providing following information:

- Are you using TOR or other anonymous proxies?
- Do you have special browser configuration or extensions?
- Are you using VPN?
- Are you using a company network?

We will seek to refine and correct this whenever possible. Thank you for your patience.

The problem with StartPage (formerly Ixquick) is that their search results are nothing compared to what you would get with Google. You can test it for yourself. The search results are surprisingly horrible, and in some cases unusable, e.g., getting zero results on a set of search terms with StartPage while Google provides hundreds of matches... still happening a year later after my Ixquick review. Privacy is essential, but a search engine must have some useful capacity comparatively speaking, and StartPage just doesn't cut it.

Update (5/20/17): In response to the reply from StartPage S. -- I'm on a dynamic IP (it changes regularly), never logged in to Google, have no Google software installed on my computer, and my browser cache is always cleared, etc. So Google has no search history or profile or any other means to track me or my searches.

Besides, I don't use Google and haven't for several years now. I've only used Google to comparatively test results among other search engines. I've done a number of tests over the past several years, all of which were conducted under new/different IP addresses, and some of which were at different geographical locations. Bottom line, the "tracking variable" in my tests is effectively controlled.

And as I've already mentioned, the issue here is in the quality of search results as well as the quantity, e.g., zero results with StartPage while Google provides hundreds in some cases. Moreover, I'm also comparing StartPage results with other non-tracking search engines. Sorry, but the technical glitch is not on my end.

For those interested, I've opted to use DuckDuckGo. It has its problems as well, but comparatively it remains the best out of the non-tracking alternatives out there, all of which still fall behind Google in terms of their search results, but from my testing and experience the best alternative to Google for privacy.

I have been a fun of Startpage since it used to be Ixquick. It helps me to get high quality search results while avoiding pervasive surveillance.

If you truly want as many search results as you possibly can find to get the information you are looking for, do not use StartPage. StartPage can respect your privacy by not using an algorithm to find everything about you to give you search results to feed your confirmation bias. But, StartPage has not modernized the amount of Google search results in its database system. Google has waaay more search results compared to StartPage. Which speaks volume about StartPage's quality altogether. People who want privacy will benefit from StartPage. However, people who want quality search results despite privacy violation need to use the Google search engine or the DuckDuckGo search engine. Unfortunately, I used to like StartPage until I realized how outdated and unreliably limited it was when it came to searching for things and will switch to DuckDuckGo again. Fortunately, I might think about switching back to StartPage once StartPage business people start modernizing StartPage's search results.

Bugs and so many ads. Its buggy and its inaccurate with my results. Search results don't give back anything good. Would not recommend.

Gives me the performance of google with the privacy of an non profit organization. Well done. Keep up the good work.

Works really well, always has the time frame pop up. Takes a bit of extra study to make it more discrete.

Private search engine where does not record your IP while enhanced by google