Serving Humans, Not Bots

 How we’re protecting your private search, and what it means for you

If you’ve recently seen loading challenges before your results, or been asked to create a free account to search, this post explains why.

Bots now make up most of our traffic. In 2024, about 35% of Startpage requests came from bots. This year it’s 70%. Many are AI-driven botnets that attack from thousands of IP addresses at once, scraping the free, high-quality Google and Bing results we offer.

Why this matters to you:

• Slower, less reliable search. Bot floods compete with you for the same capacity.
• Fewer new features. Our team has spent this year fighting attacks instead of building the features we’d planned for you.
• A threat to free search. We pay for every result, including the ones bots take, and that cost is growing fast.

What you might notice:

• A quick challenge. Before some searches, your browser does a short bit of work to show it’s a real visitor. It’s quick for one person but costly for a bot running millions of searches. In one recent week, this helped us intercept more than 1.8 million suspicious requests.
• A sign-in prompt in some cases. If your searches look similar to recent bot activity, you may be asked to sign in. Accounts are free, and your searches are never linked to them.
• More checks on VPNs. Shared VPN addresses are also heavily used by bots. We’re tuning our rules so real VPN users get flagged less.

Most people won’t notice any change.

We also got one wrong. From October 12 at 9:32 PM to October 13 at 5:25 PM CEST, a new rule blocked some real users, mostly on mobile browsers. We rolled it back and are adding broader testing so it doesn’t happen again. We’re sorry.

Your privacy remains our priority. Our protections look at how a connection behaves, not who you are. We don’t build profiles, and your searches stay private. The goal is faster, more reliable search, and a Startpage that stays free and private for the long run.

Twenty years in, our mission hasn’t changed: high-quality search that’s private.

With appreciation,
Cliff Kim, Startpage Advocate

P.S. Tell us what’s working and what isn’t. Share your feedback here. We read every message, and your feedback shapes Startpage for every user.