• StartPage

StartPage

Overview

StartPage has a rating of 3.61 stars from 41 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally satisfied with their purchases. StartPage ranks 9th among Search sites.

  • Service
    4
  • Value
    4
  • Quality
    3

This company does not typically respond to reviews

Positive reviews (last 12 months): 100%
Positive
1
Neutral
0
Negative
0

What reviewers want you to know

Positive highlights

No positive highlights yet

Critical highlights

  • I agree with other reviewers that the search results yielded by Startpage are vastly inferior to other search engines.
How would you rate StartPage?
Top Positive Review

“Private and Solid”

Andromeda g.
6/4/23

Startpage is almost perfect! It's just as advertised—all the quality search results of Google and none of the invasive tracking. My one quibble as that, personally, I find the format for image search results rather unpleasant, and this is a central feature. However, given all its other advantages, I'm willing to trade infinite image scroll and easy viewing for privacy.

Top Critical Review

“Frustrating search block”

j. t.
7/10/22

When doing an extensive search, I always get blocked with this message; We apologize for the inconvenience: to prevent possible abuse of our service, your ability to connect to Startpage has been suspended at this time. This happens when a large number of search requests are received from a particular internet connection during a short period of time. Screen scraping software may trigger this, as would a connection shared by many people at the same time, for example a VPN server or through Tor. Often, this can be resolved by connecting through a different server through your VPN provider or by connecting through a different Tor exit node. It sucks.

Reviews (41)

Rating

Timeframe

Other

Reviews that mention popular keywords

search results (9)
Thumbnail of user bobr67
2 reviews
10 helpful votes
March 27th, 2023

StartPage banned me from their search engine due to "unusual traffic similar to bots". They also mentioned use of a VPN & Tor privacy browser as contributing factors - and I was using both. It seems strange that they call themselves a privacy browser, and yet they disallow privacy tools that might hide personal data from THEM. If Startpage doesn't collect and sell data as they claim, how are they paying salaries & bills? Does Startpage offer proof of their altruistic claims? Do they have verification from the privacy police? After they banned me, I deleted Startpage from all my browsers and replaced it with DuckDuckGo.

Thumbnail of user sherd3
1 review
4 helpful votes
March 10th, 2021

I did a search on stimulus checks and numerous sites with baseless claims about election fraud came up. WTF?!?! I've never experienced this from ANY search engine.
If they do this, how can they be trusted?

Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S. – StartPage Rep

Hi Sher,

Thank you for taking the time to provide a review.

Your comment about the quality of results leads me to believe that you may have been using the mobile app. Our website provides a far superior search experience including better results and more features. We've recently delisted the app and have added dozens of new features (news, shopping, calculator, currency converter and so much more.) We also have a better handle on abuse, so legitimate users aren't blocked,

More information can be found here - https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/en/Knowledgebase/Article/View/1354/0/why-were-delisting-our-mobile-app

We'd really appreciate if you gave us another try and let us know what you think about the experience. We hope we can earn your trust back!

Thumbnail of user lizzyc11
1 review
7 helpful votes
August 10th, 2020

Bugs and so many ads. Its buggy and its inaccurate with my results. Search results don't give back anything good. Would not recommend.

Thumbnail of user daniell1072
1 review
13 helpful votes
December 30th, 2020

Startpage is a trojan horse. They pretend to care about your privacy. They don't. If you use an anonymizing proxy, they block you from searching. They are big tech creeps in disguise. Use DuckDuckGo instead.

Users who use anonymizing proxies receive the following error message when trying to use Startpage, a supposedly "private" search engine:

We apologize for the inconvenience: to prevent possible abuse of the Startpage.com service, your Internet connection has been prevented from accessing it at this time.

This happens when a large number of search requests are received from one's Internet connection in a short amount of time -- for example, if you are using "screen-scraping" software, or if you are sharing a connection with many people, perhaps through a proxy service.

Otherwise, if you have received this message in error, please help us in investigation by providing following information:

- Are you using TOR or other anonymous proxies?
- Do you have special browser configuration or extensions?
- Are you using VPN?
- Are you using a company network?

We will seek to refine and correct this whenever possible. Thank you for your patience.

Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S. – StartPage Rep

Hi Daniel - thanks for providing this feedback. Hopefully over time we can earn your trust back - especially given the lengths we go to for protecting your privacy. As an example, when you visit Startpage, your IP address is changed in their system to 0. 0. 0. 0 while many other private search engines (including DDG and Ecosia) only mask part of your IP.

We applaud our users who increase their privacy by using a VPN and many tell us that they do.

Around the time that you left this review, we had a large jump in abusers using specific VPNs and you were likely connected to a VPN server that was used for abusive purposes. Most of the time, if our users switch to a different server (within VPN provider server options) the situation resolves.

We've been focusing on resolving these issues and hope that you'll give us another try. Additionally, we've recently added many new features like news, shopping, currency conversion, calculator...

If you continue to have issues and would like personal attention to troubleshoot, we'd be happy to help. Feel free to contact us at support@startpage.com.

Thumbnail of user lisap185
3 reviews
9 helpful votes
July 23rd, 2019

Very disappointed in StartPage lately. Basically, the results HAVE NOTHING to do with my query. I have been using StartPage mostly for over a year and then off/on for 3 years. The longer I use it the worse it gets in finding relevant results. So my last query was for driving directions from point A to point B, and the results were ridiculous - how to drive from Pittsburgh to a Baseball Stadium. (I'm on the west coast) Or how to drive from Point A to Point X. You get the picture.

Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S. – StartPage Rep

Hi Lisa. Startpage.com does not currently offer driving directions. We are, however, planning to add this feature soon -- likely next quarter.

Please email our Support Team so we can help fix any other search issues. We appreciate your feedback! Here is the email address: Support@Startpage.com

Thumbnail of user halat1
1 review
20 helpful votes
July 25th, 2017

Since using startpage everytime I search for anything on google I get email adverts following up on my recent searches. Last month for examples I've tried to look for holiday destinations and suddenly my yahoo emails are flooded with adverts from travel websites promoting the destinations I had searched for and tripadvisor asking me if I still want to go there. Mind you when I did my search I never logged into any website including tripadvisor, I only did the search on StartPage. It's awful!

Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S. – StartPage Rep

Hi Hala. If you are seeing ads based on things you've searched for in the past through StartPage, that is not something we are doing. We do not record your searches, and we do not share your information with advertisers. We can't, because we don't record your data.

(In fact, our privacy promises are 3rd-party certified. You can read more about this here: https://support.startpage.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/714/0/how-can-your-privacy-policies-be-verified-can-users-trust-startpage-to-do-what-it-says)

The ads you are seeing probably result from a cookie you picked up when you left StartPage by clicking on a website result. Here's how it works:

Whenever you search with StartPage, your search is not recorded, your IP address is not recorded, your identity is not recorded, no tracking cookies are placed on your browser, and our SSL Encryption ensures that your ISP and hackers can't eavesdrop. You are never seen by Google, even though you receive authentic Google results through StartPage.

That protection applies 100% to your searches. However, when you click on a search result, whether you got it from us, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine, you leave the search engine that gave you the link and go somewhere else.

Wherever you go, once you leave StartPage, you can be seen, recorded, and tracked by the website you are going to, plus by all of its advertising and marketing and tracking partners and affiliates.

Third-party websites can place cookies on your browser that record your visit and indicate your interest in the contents on their websites. Marketers can later use those cookies to determine your past browsing history and serve you ads about those topics.

To avoid this, you can use the free StartPage Proxy which allows you to visit third-party websites through StartPage without anyone, including the website and its partners, seeing you. Our proxy service is unique, and the privacy protection it provides is not available through any other search engine.

To learn more about the StartPage Proxy and how it works, please visit this link: https://www.startpage.com/proxy/eng/help.html

If you have any other questions, please email our support team: Support@StartPage.com

Thumbnail of user fucky120
1 review
7 helpful votes
July 12th, 2019

Try something simple like searching for google maps, see how bad it sucks. I don't get it if startpage pays for results from google why are they so frustratingly different. Is google doing something their end to drive people back to their spy machine?

Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S. – StartPage Rep

Please email our Support Team so we can investigate. Most people find search results to be very similar so there may be another issue. (Though the maps are different. Startpage purposely uses Open Street Map for privacy reasons.) Here's the email address: Support@Startpage.com

Thumbnail of user davidh544
1 review
11 helpful votes
July 10th, 2017

IXQUICK may be a secure site from something,( I have no idea what) but not what you may think. For example, type in "Macy's", search for an item or two, then go to Yahoo! Mail and in a short time you'll see in the right hand part of the screen what you were looking at while in Ixquick on Macy's site. If Macy's can follow you through Ixquick, anybody can. Don't trust this site. Prove it to yourself. It's free, but worthless.

Thumbnail of user jonathant119
1 review
9 helpful votes
August 10th, 2018

It just bugs me that StartPage, just like the DuckDuckGo homepage, is SO long and they got that arrow pointing downwards. You mean I have to look at that arrow every time I view my homepage. That killed it for me with both these homepage's. Was hoping to escape the Google homepage and all things Google and YouTube after their increasing censorship, but StartPage is not the answer I see.

Thumbnail of user frankb110
1 review
29 helpful votes
April 7th, 2017

The problem with StartPage (formerly Ixquick) is that their search results are nothing compared to what you would get with Google. You can test it for yourself. The search results are surprisingly horrible, and in some cases unusable, e.g., getting zero results on a set of search terms with StartPage while Google provides hundreds of matches... still happening a year later after my Ixquick review. Privacy is essential, but a search engine must have some useful capacity comparatively speaking, and StartPage just doesn't cut it.

Update (5/20/17): In response to the reply from StartPage S. -- I'm on a dynamic IP (it changes regularly), never logged in to Google, have no Google software installed on my computer, and my browser cache is always cleared, etc. So Google has no search history or profile or any other means to track me or my searches.

Besides, I don't use Google and haven't for several years now. I've only used Google to comparatively test results among other search engines. I've done a number of tests over the past several years, all of which were conducted under new/different IP addresses, and some of which were at different geographical locations. Bottom line, the "tracking variable" in my tests is effectively controlled.

And as I've already mentioned, the issue here is in the quality of search results as well as the quantity, e.g., zero results with StartPage while Google provides hundreds in some cases. Moreover, I'm also comparing StartPage results with other non-tracking search engines. Sorry, but the technical glitch is not on my end.

For those interested, I've opted to use DuckDuckGo. It has its problems as well, but comparatively it remains the best out of the non-tracking alternatives out there, all of which still fall behind Google in terms of their search results, but from my testing and experience the best alternative to Google for privacy.

Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S. – StartPage Rep

Hi Frank. Google delivers search results to users based on their past search history and what Google thinks they would like to see or should see based on their profile information. StartPage does not do that. What's more, we cannot do that because your personal information and search history remain private when you use StartPage.

That said, you should be getting great search results through StartPage. It sounds like there could be a technical issue. Please email our technical team so we can look into it: Support@StartPage.com. Thanks!

Thumbnail of user lorraines50
1 review
23 helpful votes
November 3rd, 2017

But I find you even more biased than google, I did a simple search on, Is Islam a relgion or an ideal and your search brought up only things on how it is a religion of peace? And it brought up none of the bad aspects of Islam at all, I had to go to Yahoo and Bing for any kind of real search or information.

Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S. – StartPage Rep

Hi Lorraine. StartPage gets its results from Google, but serves them without any bias based on your past searches. (StartPage doesn't collect user personal information so "tailoring" results would not be possible, anyway.)

I just re-created a search at StartPage with the term you mentioned, "is Islam a religion or an idea". I got a wide variety of results from various sources. I'm wondering if there was a glitch of some kind when you searched. If you should find this kind of issue again, please email our support team: Support@StartPage.com Thank you!

Thumbnail of user pf13
2 reviews
14 helpful votes
July 5th, 2015

Google dropped the plus sign operator in 2011, but StartPage never adapted to this change, i. E., StartPage helpfully inserts a plus sign in front of each keyword. Hopefully the people who maintain StartPage will some day figure this out!

Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S. – StartPage Rep

Hi PF. We'd like to help. Please email our tech team: Support@StartPage.com Thank you!

2 ratings were submitted through the Sitejabber Browser Extension or converted from reviews due to lack of content.

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Thumbnail of user startpages
StartPage S.
Typically does not respond to reviews

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