You're searching on Google while not wanting to

You’re searching on Google while not wanting to

You switched to a more privacy-friendly browser. You use Signal instead of WhatsApp. And yet when you need to look something up, you open Google — because DuckDuckGo just doesn’t give you what you need for certain searches.

That frustration is valid. And it’s not your fault.

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Where the problem actually is

DuckDuckGo protects your privacy well: no tracking, no personalised ad profile, no account linkage. But DuckDuckGo pulls most of its results from Microsoft Bing’s index. Whatever Bing hasn’t indexed, DuckDuckGo won’t find either.

For large, well-known topics that works fine. But for:

• recently published content
• niche topics or smaller websites
• local news in smaller languages
• technical documentation from less well-known projects

…Bing has a smaller and more slowly updated index than Google. You notice this immediately when searching for something recent or specific.

The result: you switch back to Google — not because you want Google, but because the alternatives don’t have your answer.

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What the real options are

DuckDuckGo — a good starting point for most everyday searches. No tracking, no profile. The limitations are in Bing’s index, not in the privacy approach.

Startpage — gives you Google search results, without Google knowing you searched. Startpage acts as a proxy: your query goes via their servers to Google, the result comes back without your IP address or browsing history reaching Google. Based in the Netherlands, under European law. This is the most pragmatic choice if you want Google-quality results without Google tracking.

Brave Search — fully independent. Brave has its own crawler and its own index, built without Bing or Google. Privacy is comparable to DuckDuckGo, but the index is smaller and newer. For niche or recent content it can also fall short — but for a different reason: not because it inherits Bing’s blind spots, but because their own index doesn’t reach as far yet.

Kagi — a paid search engine (around €10/month) that combines multiple sources, lets you tune results per site, and shows no ads. For people who take search privacy seriously and are willing to pay with money rather than data.

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The honest trade-off

There is no perfect option. Google has the largest index and the fastest updates — that’s why everyone uses it, not just habit.

What most privacy-conscious users do in practice:

• DuckDuckGo or Brave Search as the default for everyday use
• Startpage as a regular fallback for searches where the default falls short
• Google only as a deliberate choice, not an automatic reflex

That’s not a perfect solution, but it’s a conscious one. You’re not handing Google more data than necessary — only for the searches where you explicitly decide to.

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What this means for privacygear.nl’s search visibility

Privacygear.nl is recently launched in the Bing index. DDG, Ecosia, and other Bing-based search engines will follow automatically once Bing has properly indexed the site and starts surfacing it in results. That takes longer than Google — not because of a technical problem, but because a new domain needs more time to build trust in Bing.

If you want to find privacygear.nl now via a privacy-friendly search engine: Startpage currently gives the most complete results, because it uses Google’s index.

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Next step

Choosing a search engine

• Search engine comparison: DuckDuckGo vs Startpage vs Brave Search vs Kagi — which one fits your situation