Spurred By PRISM Scandal, StartPage & Ixquick Surpass 3 Million Daily Searches
Alternative search engines are having a good week, likely thanks to public awareness and concern over data and privacy issues being raised by the PRISM scandal.
StartPage and Ixquick, two small search engines from the same company, announced this week that they surpassed three million daily searches for the first time. More specifically, they hit 3.4 million direct searches on Wednesday (June 12).
Ixquick.com is the company’s meta search engine that doesn’t include Google search results; the company launched StartPage.com in 2009 to provide Google search results with the increased privacy that Ixquick offers.
CEO Robert Beens credits this week’s surge in traffic to consumers looking for a more private search experience in light of the PRISM-related revelations of the past week.
“People are outraged over secret US surveillance programs and they’re looking for safe, effective search alternatives,” Beens says in the company’s announcement. “We’re excited at this growth and we welcome our newest users with open arms.”
DuckDuckGo, another alternative search engine focused on privacy, just announced its first day with 2 million searches, and it’s now set its own search quantity record for four straight days this week.
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