Conservative Search Engines: A Neutral List

Most conservative search engines are not new search engines at all. They are alternatives that market themselves as unbiased, free-speech or privacy-first, and most of them show results from Bing or Google under their own design. Only a few, such as Brave Search and Mojeek, run their own index of the web.

This guide stays neutral. It does not take a political side or rate any viewpoint. It explains where the bias debate comes from, then answers three plain questions for each engine: who runs it, where its results come from, and how a webmaster gets pages into it. I checked each engine against its own help pages in October 2026, because many older lists still name engines that have closed or changed.

What do "conservative" and "non-liberal" search engine mean?

Both labels are informal. No search company uses them as an official category. People use them for three quite different things:

• Privacy-first engines that do not track you or build a profile of your searches.
• "Free speech" or "unbiased" engines that say they filter less than the big engines.
• Family-safe engines that block adult content by default.

The phrases grew out of online discussions. Some users, often on the political right, feel that big search engines push certain news sources up and others down, so they went looking for alternatives and started calling them "conservative", "non-liberal" or "unbiased" engines.

Is there really bias in search results?

Google rejects the charge. Its "How Search works" page says political leanings do not influence how it ranks results, and that it never changes results to help or hurt any ideology or candidate. Critics still dispute this, and people on other sides make their own complaints about what search engines show. Both camps tend to agree on one point: a few companies shape what most people see.

Bias does not need a political motive. Any ranking system makes trade-offs, and those trade-offs can favour some sites over others:

• Quality signals. Google says it looks at meaning, relevance, quality, usability and context. Links from well-known sites count, which tends to favour large, established publishers.
• Index coverage. An engine can only rank pages it has crawled. A small index simply knows fewer sites.
• Policies and the law. Engines remove some results for legal reasons or under their own policies, and people disagree about where those lines sit.
• Personal context. Location, language and settings change results from one person to the next.

Knowing these factors helps you judge any claim of bias, from any direction, with a calmer eye. You do not need to settle the debate to use the list below. The facts in it are about technology, not opinion.

Which conservative search engines still work?

The table shows the engines that were live and documented when this guide was updated. "Own index" means the company crawls the web and stores pages itself, instead of buying results from another engine.

DuckDuckGo Partly own

DuckDuckGo is the best known private search engine. Its help page says it "largely" sources normal web links and images from Bing. It also runs its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, and adds data from partners such as Wikipedia. It does not tie your searches to a profile.

For webmasters: if Bing has your pages, DuckDuckGo can usually show them. Bing Webmaster Tools is the place to start.

Brave Search Own index

Brave says it uses its own index, built from scratch. For a small share of queries where it lacks confidence, it fetches results from Google and Bing in an anonymous way and mixes them in. This makes Brave one of the few large engines with a truly separate view of the web.

For webmasters: Brave finds pages by crawling. I found no Brave version of Search Console, so crawlable pages and real links from other sites are your main route in.

Mojeek Own index

Mojeek is a small company in the UK. It started as a personal project in 2004 and now runs its own index of more than nine billion pages, according to its About page. It does not track users. Its crawler is called MojeekBot.

For webmasters: do not block MojeekBot in your robots.txt file. Mojeek ranks pages with its own rules, so results can look very different from Google.

Startpage Borrowed

Startpage pays to show Google results and strips out the tracking. You get Google's ranking without Google seeing who you are. So Startpage is a privacy tool, not a different index.

For webmasters: your Startpage rankings follow your Google rankings. Nothing extra is needed.

Qwant Partly own

Qwant is a French engine. In 2025 it formed a joint venture with Ecosia, called European Search Perspective, and the two launched a shared European index named Staan. TechCrunch reported that they aimed to serve about half of French queries from it. Other results still come from Bing.

For webmasters: Bing Webmaster Tools still matters here, and a clean, crawlable site helps the new index find you.

Truth Search AI Borrowed

Trump Media launched this AI search feature on Truth Social in 2025. eWeek reports that it runs on Perplexity's technology, so it is an answer layer on another company's search, not a new index.

For webmasters: what it shows depends on the partner's search and the sources it quotes. Clear, factual pages with sources are what AI answer tools tend to cite.

Engines left off this list

Why does the index matter more than the label?

A search brand can change its logo, its privacy policy and its marketing. If it buys results from Bing or Google, the ranking underneath stays mostly the same. Only an engine with its own index can give a truly different picture of the web.

The pattern is simple: a handful of big indexes feed many search brands. When you pick an "alternative" engine, you often pick a new design and privacy policy, not new rankings. For webmasters this means that if your site is missing from Bing, it will likely be missing from several alternatives at once.

The market also shifted when Microsoft retired its public Bing Search APIs on August 11, 2025. Many small alternative engines had rented Bing results through those APIs. Without them, some had to sign new deals, build their own index or close. That is one reason so many old lists of alternative engines are now out of date.

How do you get your site listed?

You do not need to submit your site to each engine one by one. Work from the biggest sources down:

1. Google Search Console. Add your site and a sitemap. This covers Google and Startpage.
2. Bing Webmaster Tools. Add the same sitemap. This covers Bing and much of DuckDuckGo and Qwant.
3. IndexNow. This protocol tells several engines about new or changed URLs in one ping. The IndexNow FAQ says a submission goes to all engines that take part, but it does not promise indexing.
4. Let independent crawlers in. Check robots.txt and your firewall rules so you do not block MojeekBot or other small crawlers by mistake. Some security tools block unknown bots by default.
5. Earn real links. Independent engines find new sites mostly through links from pages they already know.

Our search engine listing guide walks through each console step by step. If you want to compare manual submission with letting crawlers find you, see how listing in search engines works, and once you are indexed, our tips on search engine listing optimization.

Should you optimize for each engine separately?

In most cases, no. The same basics work everywhere: clear titles, useful content, fast pages, and a site that crawlers can reach. Small engines rarely publish ranking rules, so special tricks for them are guesswork, and tilting your content to please an engine you think is biased is guesswork too. Write for your readers instead, state facts clearly and cite your sources.

What you can do is measure. Check your analytics for visits from duckduckgo.com, search.brave.com, mojeek.com, qwant.com and AI answer tools. If one sends real traffic, search your main keywords there and see how your pages look. If none sends much, your time is better spent on content.

Conservative search engines are best understood by the index behind them. Most reuse Bing or Google, and a few build their own. Get indexed by Google and Bing, keep your site open to independent crawlers, and you will show up in nearly all of them.

Frequently asked questions