better search engine: ixquick.com

Posted Jan 27, 2010 10:45 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)
In reply to: better search engine: ixquick.com by coriordan
Parent article: Ubuntu changes to Yahoo as default search provider

I don't see any ads. So what do they make money from?

better search engine: ixquick.com

Posted Jan 27, 2010 10:52 UTC (Wed) by LintuxCx (guest, #14448) [Link] (3 responses)

Try some more searches. It definitely shows me Google ads. Which makes me wonder why this search engine is loved so much by the EFF since it means Google still gets to see your query and most likely your IP address.

better search engine: ixquick.com

Posted Jan 27, 2010 14:04 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (2 responses)

I hadn't noticed that their ads service was done via Google. That's worrying alright.

It's still a better bet than using Google directly. The ixquick folks talk a lot about privacy, so maybe they've figured a way to do this right. For example, if they didn't send an IP address to Google, and just sent streams of keywords without any you-specific identifier (or with an ixquick identifier which ixquick ties to your IP address but which is meaningless to Google), then there'd be no problem. If.

better search engine: ixquick.com

Posted Jan 27, 2010 14:11 UTC (Wed) by LintuxCx (guest, #14448) [Link] (1 responses)

As long as you don't click on any of the ads, that is.

I looked at the HTML source, it looks like they're fetching the ads from Google themselves and then include them directly in their page (instead of including the ads as an object on the client side). It does mean they're slower, but that's hard to fix.

better search engine: ixquick.com

Posted Jan 31, 2010 17:22 UTC (Sun) by dmag (guest, #17775) [Link]

I see 2 benefits of Ixquick:

1) when you click on a site from Google/Yahoo, the Referrer field will contain your search terms. So any site you clicked on can see what you searched for. Lots of Wiki sites will highlight the words you searched for if you came from Google/Yahoo. On Ixquik, they appear to use POST for search, so sites can't get your keywords.

2) They do use google ads (so Google gets your IP. Big deal, turn off your router for a day and you'll likely get a new one.) But they don't appear to be sending your keywords to Google (don't know if this is policy or not, but I didn't get any relevant ads, only ixquick banners from Google). So even if Google gets your IP, they don't appear to know what you're searching for.