Chances are that you use Google as a search engine on your computer, smartphone and other devices. Google works absolutely fine, but also collects a lot of information about your search behavior and shows quite a few advertisements. Brave Search joins the list of alternative and privacy-friendly search engines. We explain how Google alternative Brave works.
Brave Search is a search engine from the company Brave, best known for the browser of the same name. It has forty million monthly users; that is not much compared to Google Chrome, Safari and Microsoft Edge. Brave’s search engine debuted as a public test version in early 2021, and now it’s time to put the free, ad-free, and “anti-Google” search engine through its paces.
If you want to try out Brave Search, open your favorite browser on a device like your smartphone or PC. Then fill in the address bar https://search.brave.com in and you immediately have the Brave search engine in front of you. The search engine works on any type of device and it doesn’t matter which browser you use. So you don’t necessarily have to use the Brave browser.
With that browser you have the advantage that you can easily set Brave Search as the default search engine.
Privacy-friendly
Building a search engine is extremely difficult because there are countless internet pages that need to be indexed and prioritized. Google has that in order and therefore shows the most relevant search results by distance. But Google also keeps track of what you search and click on and uses that information to serve you more personal ads.
Brave developed its search engine itself, without any techniques from Google. As a result, Google cannot track what you are searching for on Brave Search. Brave itself also promises not to monitor what you do. In addition, it is good to know that Brave does not know everything and indicates that neatly. Searches that Brave Search knows that it can show little to no results on its own, will still show answers. These come from alternative search engines, including Google and Bing.
Brave says that it requests the search results of these and other parties in such a privacy-friendly way that they cannot link the information to your search behavior. However, this function is disabled by default and you have to enable it yourself, more about that later.
Relevant results
On the site, simply enter your search query and press Enter. You will then be presented with the search results. After a week of use, we find that Brave Search shows more relevant websites than we expected. Although DuckDuckGo and Startpage, two other privacy-friendly search engines that we normally use, do a little better.
Google often shows even more useful information, but as mentioned, that is at a (privacy) price. Brave Search is certainly suitable for average searches.
The search engine also deals well with questions, words and sentences asked in Dutch and – just like the competition – shows an information block from Wikipedia or, for example, recipes if that makes sense. It’s nice that you can’t just search on all (everything), but also on Images (Pictures), news (news) and Videos (videos). In addition, you can All regions indicate that you only want search results from a certain country, for example the Netherlands.
The stricter filter is also good at blocking websites that are prone to fraud
Filter results
Brave Search uses a medium search stringency by default to block annoying websites. Via the button Safe Search: Moderateyou can make this filter stricter by Strict to select. This is especially recommended if you set the search engine for use by children. This stricter filter is also better at blocking websites that are prone to fraud. Do you not want to be hindered by a filter? Then choose via Safe search the option Off to disable any kind of filtering.
Finally, there is the button any time. With this you can indicate from which period you want to see search results. By default, this filter is always (any time). If you want to search more specifically, you can use this button to indicate that you only want search results from yesterday (past day), this week (Past week) or a self-determined period (custom range) want to see.
Quick Settings
Of course, Brave Search also has a settings menu. You open this menu via the gear wheel that is visible at the top right of the homepage of the search page. The menu partially expands to show a handful of quick settings. This way you can adjust the language, something that is of little use to us for the time being because Dutch is not yet supported.
You can also indicate with one click whether you want the search results to open in a new tab. This has the advantage that the screen with the search query remains open, but the disadvantage that you can get many tabs if you open multiple search results from the search screen.
It is also possible to change the theme of the search engine from light (light) to dark (dark). According to many people, a dark mode looks more pleasant, especially in the evenings.
More settings
By pressing the button Show more Clicking will open the entire settings screen. Free at the top you see the option Anonymous local results, which is enabled by default with us. The search engine then uses your location (via your device’s IP address) to show more relevant results, but without saving or sharing that location. You can disable this option with one click.
Under this option you will find the option Google fallback mixing (if you search through the Brave Browser). Brave Search will then not show any results (anonymous) from Google. If you find the search results disappointing, it may help to enable this option to see if it makes the results more relevant.
Finally there is Anonymous usage metrics. This option is enabled by default and therefore regularly sends anonymous information to Brave. Brave uses that information to improve its search engine. You can also turn off this data sharing at the touch of a button.
Ad-free
What is striking about Brave Search is that the search engine does not show any advertisements. A conscious choice, the company says. Brave wants to introduce users to the search engine first. Behind the scenes, the company is indeed working on an advertising model – after all, the sun rises for nothing. Brave says it wants to implement privacy-friendly ads in the search engine ‘in the future’.
Competing search engines like DuckDuckGo and Startpage show that this is very well possible. For those who want to be sure that they can also search ad-free later, Brave comes with a paid subscription that hides the advertisements. This subscription costs $3 per month.
