STOP USING Google Search

Google Search is such an integral part of many of our lives that ditching it for another search engine might sound like a crazy idea. It’s the preferred search provider for nearly 93 per cent of UK web users (see www.snipca.com/41887), three quarters of whom check it at least three times a day (www.snipca.com/41888), and the verb ‘to google’ is even in the Oxford English Dictionary.

So why would you want to use anything else to search the web? Well, as we reveal in this feature, there’s a growing number of reasons – and not just the usual complaint that Google tracks your data (though we cover that, too). It’s a sad fact that Google Search is no longer as reliable and accurate as it used to be, partly – as we explain – due to problems of its own making.

The good news is that there are now more excellent alternative search engines than ever that are focused on privacy rather than profit. We’ve tested the six strongest contenders to Google Search’s throne, to discover which offers the most relevant, unbiased and untracked results.

And no, we haven’t included Bing, because Microsoft is also notorious for collecting your data, though some websites we’ve reviewed use Bing-powered results.

And finally we also reveal some of the best tricks for getting the most out of Google’s rivals.

WHY YOU SHOULD STOP USING GOOGLE SEARCH

Google manipulates your web experience

The reason Google became the most popular search engine, while the likes of AltaVista, Excite and Lycos fell by the wayside, was its ability to quickly deliver accurate results. It sourced these from a huge index of pages that it compiled by constantly ‘crawling’ the web. Over the years, however, Google’s focus has shifted from prioritising sites based on the relevance of their content to those that most closely adhere to Google’s own standards.

One example of Google attempting to manipulate the web is its use of accelerated mobile pages (AMP). Introduced in 2015, AMP is a system whereby streamlined versions of web pages are preloaded and delivered to your browser via Google’s servers.

When AMP was first announced, Google said it would help ensure that multimedia content such as videos and animations would load rapidly and behave consistently across desktop and mobile devices. But the system has been criticised for allowing Google to favour AMP links in its search results and use them