Ixquick Metasearch — Outstanding and Secure Search Engine

By Tuesday August 4, 2009

Ixquick Metasearch — This is one of the few new search engines I like and it does not track you like a dog.



39 Comments
  1. qb says:
    8/4/2009 at 3:57 pm

    The results are in a sane ranking, unlike bing. I likey.

    Reply
  2. jasmoran66 says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:07 pm

    Just spent time trying Ixquick out and it seems a viable search alternative. Thanks for the heads up, Mr. D.

    Reply
  3. pecker says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:13 pm

    ‘Great!’ me thinks ‘Finally a replacement/competitor to Google that looks promising.’ But… looking at their blurb they say they are metasearch engine. Am I right in thinking that, if they become too popular, evildoers at Google and Bing can block queries from their servers or start feeding them duff results?

    Reply
  4. Blahblah says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:16 pm

    They changed their name to startpage. They also have an https service.

    Reply
  5. RadioGuy says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:22 pm

    They’re in the process of rebranding as “startpage.com”, by the way. It’s been my default search for a while now and I’ve been quite happy.

    Reply
  6. RadioGuy says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:24 pm

    Ah, you beat me to it, blahblah. Well now I just sound stupid.

    Reply
  7. sargasso says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:33 pm

    It says on the web page that ixquick doesn’t track IP numbers, but then it produces local advertisers.

    Reply
  8. Jägermeister says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:38 pm

    Here are their regular and SSL versions of the Firefox plugins.

    Reply
  9. Jägermeister says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:40 pm

    #7 – sargasso

    No IP is stored.

    Reply
  10. Animby says:
    8/4/2009 at 4:53 pm

    It looks interesting and I’ve added it to Firefox to try for a while. One complaint is that a bit more of a blurb could be attached to each result. Also, it seems to be scanning other search results. Okay. It says it’s a metasearch. But I don’t see any results (in the five rather random searches I performed) that list Google among the results. Since Goog has, by far, the best catalog of the web, this could be a problem. I don’t really search for much I feel a need to keep secret (except for nude pix of John) but it’s nice to have an alternative. Thanks for the tip.

    Reply
  11. soundwash says:
    8/4/2009 at 5:06 pm

    i’ve been using this engine since it first
    came out. -definitely a winner.

    it aggregates it’s results from these engines:
    * All the Web
    * EntireWeb
    * Qkport
    * Ask/Teoma
    * Exalead
    * Wikipedia
    * Bing
    * Gigablast
    * Yahoo
    * Cuil
    * Open Directory

    it then it kicks out the top 10 hits from those engines on usually no more than 5 pages of hits.

    -plus, (in firefox at least) you can edit the search engine xml file to make your searches go encrypted over the wire.

    find this file in your search plugin folder open it in notepad, locate the the line below (near the end of the file) change the http to https:

    “<os:Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="https://ixquick.com/do/metasearch.pl?&quot;

    this will encrypt your searches from the firefox search window with a AES 256bit encryption.

    helps thwart anyone sniffing
    your searches for nefarious deeds. :o

    good engine to check against the mainstream engines for search manipulation too.

    \o/ me like it..

    -s

    Reply
  12. Luc says:
    8/4/2009 at 6:02 pm

    This one is secure: http://scroogle.org

    I won’t use ixquick/startpage because it removes the query from the address line (GET method). I love the query on the address line because it lets me create shortcuts on Firefox so I can type my query right into the address bar, no matter what page is on at any given time. For example, I type “gg query”, hit Enter and go to http://google.com/search?safe=off&q=query
    Bliss!

    Reply
  13. loconavi says:
    8/4/2009 at 6:48 pm

    I have been listening to the Startpage.com ads on the radio for some time now. If JCD approves then I believe. I am just glad this isn’t another ijango MLM scheme.

    Reply
  14. Faxon says:
    8/4/2009 at 6:55 pm

    Thank you for this. I heard an ad on the radio last week, but could not remember the name of it. Looks good to me, and if I can isolate myself from the Fascist State one tiny bit, I am all for it.

    Reply
  15. Tomas says:
    8/4/2009 at 7:31 pm

    John, Of course if it becomes popular enough…it will be compromised by NSA. Sheesh.

    Reply
  16. jccalhoun says:
    8/4/2009 at 8:33 pm

    I’m a fan of spezify. It may not be the most useful or the best actual search but at least it has a unique way of presenting the information which seems like a nice way to stumble upon things. Here’s its results for john c dvorak for example http://spezify.com/#/john%20c%20dvorak

    Reply
  17. Glenn E. says:
    8/5/2009 at 1:59 am

    All Google would have to do is offer an “opt out” or “opt in” option about their URL tracking and recording. And they’ll be back in everyone’s good graces. Plus there’s no guarantee that Startpage won’t start recording URLs in the future. The Homeland Security might soon require this, whether Startpage wants to or not.

    That search query encrypytion feature looks nice. Because if your ISP is recording all your URL requests (and probably does). Then what does it matter whether your search engine does or not? You’ve been rated out from the start.

    Reply
  18. orangetiki says:
    8/5/2009 at 3:05 am

    I want to know what they paid for Startpage.com

    Reply
  19. RadioGuy says:
    8/5/2009 at 3:17 am

    A while back I heard an interview with the CEO of Ixquick/Startpage (Katherine Albrecht show) and he seemed very dedicated to user privacy.

    http://www.katherinealbrecht.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2962:mon-november-24-2008&catid=20:show-archives&Itemid=44

    Reply
  20. Bobba says:
    8/5/2009 at 3:57 am

    Really like it! Added as default search on firefox, and trying to find some program to change the default search engine in Safari.

    Reply

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