Google tracks searches and also sends search data to visited sites in the HTTP referrer headers. This information can be tied together to allow someone to look at what you have been searching over multiple queries (for example, see AOL search data leak).
Are there any decent alternatives to Google that place a higher emphasis on privacy? And what makes this alternative better, or what does it do differently?
Google now has SSL support, so use https://www.google.com. Referrer headers are not sent to the pages you go to from SSL search results, nor are search queries snoopable.
If you want to minimize tracking, block cookies from *.google.com, explicitly enabling cookies for at least mail.google.com, if you use GMail.
DuckDuckGo claims not to not track your searching.
I've only used it a little but find it's good if a little short on results sometimes, would allow this since it seems very new and it provides easy link to google if short changed.
I've noticed stackoverflow have added this to their search options which must give it some kudos. That said I cannot say it makes a better alternative but it is a decent alternative.
Try https://ssl.scroogle.org/. It's basically a tunnel to Google that strips out your personal information. Has a Firefox search plugin, too.
The Chrome Search Engine URL for https://ssl.scroogle.org is
https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbwssl.cgi?Gw=%s
StartPage allows to perform searches using Google but without the privacy downsides.
StartPage will send the search query to and fetch results from the Google search engine, crucially without saving the users' IP addresses or giving any personal user information to Google's servers. StartPage is the default search engine in the Tor Browser.
