SALT LAKE CITY — Everyone has used Google and most people have at least heard of Bing; some have even tried it. But did you know there are other search engines out there?

Here we look at five alternative search engines, each with its own purpose. Many alternative search engines focus on searcher privacy, while others are made to be easier and more simple to use.

The use of lesser-known search engines is becoming more common. Five of the most-used alternative search engines are reviewed below.

Be sure to check out Tech and Gadget's review of Google and Bing, as the alternative search engine reviews below use Google and Bing as reference standards.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is a proprietary search engine, meaning it finds web results using its own web crawlers and indexers, and does not rely on Google or Bing to find results for it.

DuckDuckGo has an emphasis on finding results quickly, and focuses on searcher privacy. It protects user privacy by not collecting any personal information.

Overall, DuckDuckGo is easy to use and well-rounded. A quick test search on "NSA Prism" yields accurate, useful and non-duplicated web results. At the top of the page is a small box with news results with time stamps, followed by web results. The web results were from news articles, but did not have a time stamp indicating when they were published.

Advanced features are available on DuckDuckGo using the "!Bang" syntax. For example, if you are looking for results only from YouTube, you can type your search terms and "!yt". Google and Bing accomplish this with the syntax "site:youtube.com".

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DuckDuckGo also offers "!Bang" commands that increase your privacy, such as "!proxy". When "!proxy" is included in your search terms, DuckDuckGo will route your connection to a search result through third-party proxies to better anonymize your Internet traffic.

People switching to DuckDuckGo from Google will miss a dedicated image results page, shopping results page and news page. While similar results can be achieved using "!Bang" commands, a simple link on the side bar or top bar would be nice.

MetaCrawler

MetaCrawler is a metasearch engine. It searches Google, Yahoo! (whose results are provided by Bing), Yandex and a few other search engines and compiles the results into one list.

MetaCrawler includes custom searches for web, images, video, news, yellow pages and white pages. It uses an algorithm to determine the most relevant results from all the search engines it compiles.

With regard to privacy, MetaCrawler is a mixed bag. On one hand, it masks your searches from Google, Yahoo and Yandex's point of view — the search request comes from MetaCrawler instead of you. On the other hand, MetaCrawler now has the information that would have been given to other search engines.

MetaCrawler is useful for those who find that they need to search multiple search engines to find what they're looking for. In a test search, the results on MetaCrawler were also on the first page of results on both Google and Bing. MetaCrawler provided no advantage to a standard search engine.

Yandex

Yandex is a proprietary search engine and the most-used search engine outside the Google, Bing group. Yandex is a Russian company that has made great advancements in catering to English language users.

Yandex offers services similar to Google, and users can easily perform web, image and video searches. However, Yandex is not a privacy-focused search engine. Those looking for an option that is more private than Google or Bing will need to look to other search engines.

One nice feature of Yandex is its ability to create information cards, similar to Google and Bing. When searching for something that has an entry in Wikipedia, Yandex will create an info card pulling pictures and information from Wikipedia about your search.

Yandex feels quick and responsive. It feels a lot like the search engine you are used to. It has auto-complete and options to perform image and video searches.

Like Google, Yandex offers an email service. That service is not reviewed here.

Downsides to Yandex include the fact that images are not included in standard web searches. A searcher will need to click a link to the image search page instead of having a few top image results included in the web page like Google and Bing do.

Dogpile

Dogpile is another metasearch engine, like MetaCrawler, and shares the same pros and cons as MetaCrawler.

The page layout of Dogpile is almost the same as MetaCrawler, but the search results differ slightly. While both sites search Google, Yahoo! and Yandex, the results shown differ between Dogpile and MetaCrawler.

A test search yielded useful results, but showed no apparent advantage over something like Google or Bing.

Startpage

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Startpage is a service that combines enhanced privacy and Google search results. It is owned and operated by ixquick, a privacy-focused metasearch engine. Searches through startpage.com get their results solely from Google. Startpage claims to protect its users from government surveillance by not recording any information from its users. That way, if requests come in for information about searches that have been performed, they have nothing to report.

In addition to not gathering information on its users, Startpage includes a proxy service which allows users to browse to sites listed in the search results without revealing IP address information.

In addition to the proxy service, Startpage does not use cookies. This means little evidence of your Startpage visit will be saved on your computer, but not in your browsing history.

The bottom line

There are many alternative search engines available; the ones selected for this article are just some of the most used.

People who desire additional privacy when searching the Internet should look into DuckDuckGo (a Google alternative) or Startpage (a private way to use Google).

Those looking to try something different and get away from Google or Bing should try Yandex (a Google-like company based in Russia).

Metasearch engines, such as MetaCrawler or Dogpile, are a great way to search Google, Bing and Yandex all at once.

Taylor Wilson is an IT professional at a small Utah company. He has a passion for helping people with technology. Email: taylorwilson@testonetwo.com Online: www.testonetwo.com or twitter.com/twil6

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