Startpage.com Reviews 

Acting as a google mirror, spammed with 'Sponsored' search results. Was a good search engine, but no more.
Changing to duckduckgo.com

no thanks, i rather be tracked than having lacking to no search results

DEAR RIYADH,

Excellent Customer Service.
(Polite & Patience) combined into AESERVER Domain Knowledge is Riyadh

A job well done

SHOCKING - USELESS - Regularly returns zero results when other engines give plenty.. Last search: Phryll energy - zip, zero results

My favorite search engine for years now. I have recommended this one to many people. To me this is like Google but private. Works great, good results. From all the privacy search engines I tried this one for me for sure the best one. Highly recommended.

Great search engine with privacy features although I wish I could also just put in a link and use anonymous view

It would be nice if you searched for something and actually got results that included your search terms, right? Well, that won’t happen with this trash heap of a search engine. The losers who made this site must think they know what you want to find more than you do, because your results very rarely match the query. In fact, you can search the sites they serve up and most of the time the majority of your search terms aren’t even on those sites. As for privacy…well, they share your “anonymized” system information to Google, which you can read in their privacy policy:

“Our search result pages may include a small number of clearly labeled "sponsored links," which generate revenue and cover our operational costs. Those links are retrieved from platforms such as Google AdSense. In order to enable the prevention of click fraud, some non-identifying system information is shared, but because we never share personal information or information that could uniquely identify you, the ads we display are not connected to any individual user.”

What shady pieces of garbage. They should be ashamed of themselves. Hopefully the site is out of business soon.

Edited to add: This pathetic company tries to silence critics by flagging honest reviews such as this one as “containing harmful or illegal content.” What an absolute joke of a company and joke of a search engine. The sooner they go under the better.

Inhuman search engine maintained by bots. It claims to offer safe private searching, and yet . . .
Startpage suspends accounts for using VPN ! ! !
VPN has been around for some years and offers PRIVACY, something that Startpage uses as a selling point. Startpage is in the Internet Stone Age! Get up to date and accept that VPN is in use.

Frequent suspension of Startpage searches due to my Mullvad paid VPN service.

Few years ago Startpage was good. Then not so much, after I decided to move on Metager. After few years, Metager is dead for sure - their results are very bad. So I give Startpage another chance. Working good so far. For sure - not detailed as Google, but hey - we know why we choose Startpage, no? As I know - I liked their "Anonymous View".
PS: Few people mension blocked by Startpage when using VPN. I use paid VPN few years and never have any problem with search or blocking on Startpage. But sometimes when search on Google, I always need to solve captcha ! :-)

The same experience as EVERY OTHER search engine.
Unintuitive and frustrating

You type something in and your results don't match at all, you keep on trying with this word changed or that word, by the end you remember how the internet used to be before AI and Google and you give up.

Start page uses Google/Bing and both are propaganda machines constantly showing you results they want you to see rather than what you queried.

Find it pretty good.
The results come from Google.
I am using it through a VPN at the moment without problems.

I like startpage but unfortunately I also like privacy and using ProtonVPN almost always causes startpage to block access. I used to report the issue each time but now it's essentially all the time this occurs so I have to move to another search engine.

Used to be Pretty Good. Now awful and really cannot be respecting privacy as it claims. I am continually being blocked "your connection has been suspended" this for using PROTON VPN. I for one am not willing to wait arround unable to perform perfectly reasonable searches while they take an age to resolve the innappropriat block!

March 4, 2023
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.Lots of users are complaining about their IP addresses being blocked because of too much searches during a certain period of time.
I did do that in the past as well, got nothing else to do. The past is a few years ago, and they blocked me as well. That was my own doing, and it's their website.
***
Seems they don't fancy such search behavior.for monetary reasons.
As can be found Startpage is co-owned by an US based leading advertising giant.
(Startpage - Acquired by a US ad-tech company in 2019)
Pretty interesting for an enterprise that tries to convince users "we're concerned about your privacy".
(I happened to know a burglar who was concerned about other people's belongings.)
***
Today I happened to receive said nag-message, when I did use a stand-alone browser from a forgotten thumb drive.
So I did change IP addresses, I have several.
All of them triggered said nag-message.
That is a bit smelly don't you think it is?
Mmmhh, I changed browsers. (Infamous EDGE)
Interesting: no more nag-messages popping up.(...)
***
Two possibilities:
1. Collecting IP addresses, that you (Startpage owners) promised users not to collect?
2. Or telling fairytales about blocking said IP addresses (that they didn't collect)?
OBS. From whatever side one approaches this, they in one way or another way failed to tell the truth.
For EDGE connected properly
***
So, fingerprinting browsers and keeping records, that's what they're most probably are doing.
And fingerprinting is a means to identify a certain browser, with an almost 100% hit rate.
And what's the co-owner of Startpage again ???
They might not use your IP address to identify you, but it seems they're using other means to identify
you and/or your browser.
And that's data, and selling data is big business.
****
Furthermore, when I click on some of the first hits in them search results of Startpage (in EDGE) the message
(containing): *googleadservices* refused to connect*.pops up.
And that is because that domain name, between others, had been rerouted in the computers Hosts file to the local host address, and that brings them nowhere.
@Rem, a hosts file acts as the first domain name server {DNS}
***
Personally I don't trust them (Startpage) anymore.
Neither do I trust the whole internet anymore.
But everybody got to decide that for themselves, because nobody has the right to tell you what to believe.

Startpage is yet another google

Startpage is yet another google. It is based on Google and the search results are the same bizarre and biased as Google.

Avoid StartPage Search! It doesn't work while on VPN. I am a StartMail user but I have decided to cancel it, as it's VERY expensive and Startpage doesn't work for me. I wouldn't recommend Startpage search for anyone as it doesn't work on VPN. Most my family/friends are VPN users. Also, StartMail is expensive for what it offers ($65US/YR).

Good intentions, horrible performance.
After just 3 searchs, it doesn´t work (because Im a bot, apparently)

I was using Brave Search before I found out Startpage.
When I first heard about it, I read that it used Google.
Without reading any further I closed the tab. Then after some months, I heard about Startpage in a YouTube video, the guy said that it indeed did use Google but without the tracking and stuff that invade privacy. So I gave it a try, and instantly loved it.
For me, the searches are faster than Brave Search and I also love the anonymous view feature.
Amazing.

Used to be a great service until they changed the settings defaults, and how to select and save YOUR choices.
Managed to work that out.

Now the "drop down select region" is constantly displaying several countries of the list, even though I have set to UK in settings.

Mind you. Settings doesn't always save what you set/save. Might have to seek better option !