A side-by-side comparison
Brave Search vs Bing
Bing is owned and operated by Microsoft. It’s the world’s second most widely used search engine, but that’s thanks largely to its status as the default search engine for the Edge Web browser and other Windows devices.
Very few people switch to Bing on its own merits, because Bing lags behind the competition on privacy, features, and results quality.
So how does Bing stack up against Brave Search? Let’s compare.
Is Brave Search more private than Bing?
Microsoft is the epitomy of “Big Tech,” and one of the most valuable companies in the world. While Microsoft has many sources of revenue, a huge portion of their profit comes from ad sales in the Bing search engine. (The same ads that appear in engines that use Bing’s search index, such as DuckDuckGo.) Microsoft sells highly targeted ad space in Bing by collecting as much data about you as possible. So it should come as no surprise that Bing is filled with trackers and other privacy invasions.
Brave Search, however, is built to deliver high-quality search results without profiling you:
Chart describes default settings
- Full protection
- Limited protection
- No protection, or off by default
Bing is built for tracking. It supports ads and trackers designed to follow you across the Web, record everything you do, and link that activity directly with you.
Brave Search, meanwhile, is private by default.
Are Brave Search results better quality than Bing? Is the ranking more transparent?
Both Brave Search and Bing use their own independent index of the Web to deliver search results (meaning neither source their results from another search index). But Bing “personalizes” your search results based on all the data they collect about you, while Brave Search takes a different approach. Bing has also had instances of editorial bias in its results, in some cases removing or altering type-ahead options or other pages.
Brave Search doesn’t personalize results for different users, so the same query will produce the same results no matter who typed it in. Brave Search also builds its index via the Web Discovery Project, which uses private browsing data from real humans to show higher-quality results, with far less SEO spam or junk webpages (as opposed to building their index strictly via Web crawlers). You can also customize your Brave Search experience with Goggles—which lets you alter your search results ranking according to your own preferences (a kind of editorializing that other search providers do without even asking).
Check out the comparison based on results quality and transparency:
Chart describes default settings
- Full functionality
- Limited functionality
- No functionality, or off by default
With an independent search index powered by real users, and unique ways to customize your search results, Brave Search provides a superior search experience—without unwanted, behind-the-scenes manipulation.
FAQs
What is Brave Search?
Brave Search is the world’s most complete, independent, private search engine. By integrating Brave Search into its privacy-first Brave browser, Brave offers the first all-in-one browser/search alternative to Big Tech platforms. Brave Search is available as the default search engine in Brave or most other major browsers, or at search.brave.com.
How do I use Brave Search, or set it as default?
For some Brave users who downloaded the Brave browser on October 19, 2021 or later, Brave Search will be automatically set as the default search engine. Simply start a search in the address bar of any Brave browser tab. Learn more.
All other users can set Brave Search as the default search engine in Brave or most other major browsers, and then search from the address bar of any browser tab. To check the default search engine in the Brave Browser, open the settings page at brave://settings/search.
You can also use Brave Search by visiting search.brave.com from any browser.
Can I use Brave Search in Microsoft Edge?
Yes, Brave Search is accessible via any Web browser, including Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and more. To use Brave Search in Edge, simply navigate to search.brave.com. You can even set Brave Search as the default search engine in Chrome.
Does Brave Search use Bing for any of its search results?
No, Brave Search does not use Bing (or any other search index) to provide its search results. Brave Search is powered by its own, completely independent index of the Web. This means that, unlike supposedly “neutral” engines like DuckDuckGo (which is totally reliant on Bing for its results), Brave Search is not beholden to Big Tech companies for text, image, or video results.
Do I have to use Brave Search if I use the Brave browser?
No. You can still use other search engines in the Brave browser. Just visit the Web address of that search engine (like google.com), or set another engine as the default in the Brave browser.
How is Brave Search different? What does “independent” mean?
First, and most importantly, Brave Search adheres to core principles of privacy. We don’t profile you. Ever. This is far different from most other search engines, who collect every piece of data about your search behavior and tie it directly to you as a way to sell more targeted ads.
Second, Brave Search operates from a fully independent search index. An index is the list of billions of webpages, and some basic info about those pages, that search engines draw from to deliver search results. Google and Bing have their own indexes as well; most other “alternative” search engines—even supposedly “neutral” or “private” ones—do not. They’re just façades that rely exclusively on third-parties for their results. If Big Tech suddenly ceased to function, those other search operators would go offline. Brave Search, meanwhile, would stay fully operational.
Independence means choice—for users to be safer online, and not be beholden to the privacy invasions, censorship, biases, or economic interests of Big Tech.
Does Brave Search filter, downrank, or censor search results?
No, Brave Search does not filter, downrank, or censor search results. Nor will we change our search algorithm to increase or decrease the prominence of results in response to current events or anyone’s political, religious, ethical, or other beliefs. Brave Search—like Brave itself—is intended to be a user-first portal to the Web, free of Big Tech’s manipulation.
However, there is one exception to this rule—we do need to comply with laws governing search engines, including CSAM, copyright takedown (DMCA), right to be forgotten (GDPR), and nation-state orders.
Also note that, if you’ve chosen to enable it, Brave Search can anonymously retrieve Google search results for your query (a feature known as Google fallback mixing). This feature can be helpful for some unique or “long-tail” queries that Brave may not serve results for. If you’ve enabled fallback mixing, and a result is censored, filtered, or re-ranked in Google, those changes would pass through to our results. You can easily see how often a third-party result is mixed (via our independence score), and our aim is to gradually reduce this mixing over time.
What is the Goggles feature, and can it help limit search censorship?
Goggles is a beta feature of Brave Search. Goggles enable anyone, or any community of people, to create sets of rules and filters to constrain the searchable space and / or alter the ordering of results. Anyone could then choose to apply a Goggle—or extend it—to their view of Brave Search results. Essentially, Goggles will act as a re-ranking option on top of the Brave Search index.
This means that, instead of a single ranking, Brave Search can offer an almost limitless number of ranking options, enabling search use-cases that could be too specific for an all-purpose search engine. While Brave Search doesn’t have editorial biases, all search engines have some level of intrinsic bias. Goggles allows users to counter this intrinsic bias in the ranking algorithm.
To access Goggles, simply conduct a search at search.brave.com, and then click the Goggles tab on the results page. Or you can visit the Goggles landing page.
Want to learn more? Read the full white paper about Goggles, or visit the GitHub repo to learn how to make your own Goggles.
What's the Web Discovery Project, and how do I opt in?
The Web Discovery Project is a privacy-preserving way for you to contribute to the growth and independence of Brave Search. If you opt in, you’ll contribute some anonymous data about searches and webpage visits made within the Brave browser (including pages arrived at via some, but not all, other search engines). This data helps build the Brave Search independent index, and ensure we show results relevant to your search queries. By “data” we mean search queries, search result clicks, the URLs of pages visited in the browser, time spent on those pages, and some metadata about the pages themselves. Learn more.
The Web Discovery Project is a privacy-preserving way for us to build the index, allowing us to both remain independent and serve better quality, more real-time results than if we relied on simple Web crawlers the way Google does.
To opt in, open the Settings menu in the Brave browser. Select Search engine on the left panel, and then toggle on Web Discovery Project. You can opt out again at any time.
