Yippy search engine no longer works and redirects to Duck Duck Go
Recent years have seen Google’s reputation take a battering, from bowing down to Chinese censors, to losing vast quantities of user data. So many of us are looking around for search alternatives.
Yippy might have come up in your quest for a different type of search engine – one which respects your privacy. But does it measure up and should you make the switch from Google straight away? This Yippy review will weigh up its strengths and weaknesses, and help you make the decision.
What’s the big deal with private search engines?
Firstly, why would you think about using a search tool like Yippy instead of established options like Google? Well, unless you’ve been in the Siberian wilderness for the past five years, you’ll probably be aware that Google has a less than stellar reputation for protecting user privacy.
From implanting tracking cookies to monitor user activity to leaking huge troves of data from Google Docs, and allowing app developers to access users’ Gmail accounts, the search giant has not distinguished itself on the privacy front.
As a result, plenty of alternatives have started to emerge which privilege privacy, and the Yippy search engine is one of the leading contenders. These providers offer something very different. Instead of monetizing searches by tracking, storing, and selling user data, they tend to seek other ways to make money. And, in some cases, they aren’t in the search game for a quick buck at all.
So how does Yippy search measure up? Let’s get into the details and work out whether this is the web search you’ve been waiting for.
Getting to know Yippy: What is it, and what does it do?
Despite its name, the Yippy search engine is not a communal solution dreamed up by hippies. Instead, its origins lie in the IT department at Carnegie Mellon University.
In the 2000s, researchers there developed a tool called Clusty. Unlike traditional search engines, which use keywords and other metrics to deliver listed results, Clusty sought to deliver results in the form of “clusters” – a different way to visualize what users were looking for.
When the creators branched out to form their own company, Vivisimo, they quickly sold their work onto a company called Yippy, in 2010. This was followed by an even larger acquisition in 2012, when the company was swallowed by IBM.
Much of the Vivisimo developed tech around Clusty was incorporated into IBM’s Watson AI-based search systems. But as of 2019, the Yippy search engine continues to operate as a standalone Google alternative.
What is Yippy search?
Yippy provides bespoke search-related services for corporate clients – offering a fast, intuitive way to search through mountains of big data. The idea is to leverage the Clusty project’s achievements, turning this data into actionable, relevant results.
This makes the company’s services relatively popular with data mining operations, which seek to derive profitable insights from medical, retail, or scientific data.
Data mining of this type is not something you can really do with the basic Google front end. And Yippydefinitely market themselves as occupying a niche above Google – calling their tools “search appliances” and referring to searches as “e-discovery.”
But here’s the big question for our purposes: is it useful for ordinary web users?
Major features of the Yippy search engine
Before we answer that question, let’s quickly summarize some aspects of what sets Yippy search apart:
- The search engine employs what are known as “content connectors” to find (or “discover”) relevant search results. These connectors associate similar pieces of content based on subject matter and can be applied to unstructured data sources. So it’s not all based on a web mapping system as with Google.
- The Yippy search engine claims to offer enhanced security relative to Google, using “field level security” to keep client searches confidential. This is mainly intended for use by companies with complex IT networks, who want to lock down older data sources and defend their proprietary interests.
- The Yippy search front end can be extensively customized, resulting in bespoke search applications, and this extends to offering endless data visualization options. So when users discover connections and clusters, they can present these findings in ways that are easy to understand.
These features are delivered at an enterprise level – not via a simple web app. And they can be implemented at a lower cost than Google’s equivalent enterprise services. That may be why organizations as diverse as federal credit unions and oil corporations have embraced Yippy search.
How does Yippy search work?
Yippy isn’t primarily a mass-market Google search alternative. It’s not the kind of tool you can turn to every morning to seek out the latest news. Instead, Yippy is pitched at businesses who have internal and specific data processing requirements.
However, there is freely available front end for all of us to try. And it’s a pretty effective private search engine. Users can type in whatever they need to look for, and the engine delivers a list of clean, more or less relevant results.
If you check the left-hand side of the results page, you’ll find something interesting: a list of clusters with “+” links to unfold related websites. If you click on these links, you’ll be taken to a fresh list of links which expands on the original list. It all adds up to an interesting way to navigate the web.
Is Yippy search safe to use?
Finally, we need to move onto the question of security. In terms of privacy, one big detail stands out: Yippy don’t record user logs. They make their money by providing corporate services, not by monetizing search data.
Officially the company does not collect information that could identify users (something spelled out in its privacy policy).
However, be aware that IP address information may be collected, along with “browser type, browser language, referral data, the date and time of your query and one or more cookies…that may uniquely identify your browser while in a session.”
So while Yippy is more solid than Google when it comes to privacy, there’s still quite a lot going on underneath the surface which might alarm searchers.
But, overall, if you want a powerful business tool for searching the web or internal data, Yippy search could be ideal. It’s an intriguing Google alternative for the rest of us, but not the last word on search engine security.
I loved Yippy and bought their stock as they were developing a app so you could skip the browser. The Stock has tanked to “0” and tYippy now directs to Duck Duck Go. Interestingly, Duck Duck Go now has a app similar to the one Yippy was working on. Was there a back door deal that when on at the stock holders peril?
any news? hoping it makes a comeback in 2022 since goof CEO said they were making a new version. but who knows
Hello, fento. Sadly, we have no news regarding the Yippy search engine.
Appears to be worse than that now, TDA will not allow purchases of the stock starting September 3rd and when the 28th rolls in, they will no longer guarantee the ability to be able to sell the security due to no quotation: Yippy
Why is yippy stock still available to buy & sell in brokerage accounts?
Hey, Bernie. I’m honestly not sure, I’m not an expert on the stock market. Perhaps there’s more to this story than meets the eye.
Yippy.com doesn’t exist any more, the site now redirects to DuckDuckGo.com so you should probably remove it. I would suggest either adding privacy search engine OneSearch (onesearch.com) or meta/privacy search engine All the Internet (alltheinternet.com) both of them are good privacy wise. OneSearch is owned by Yahoo!/Verizon/AOL.
All the internet seems to be gone as well. Not sure I would trust OneSearch either as its owned by Yahoo/VZ/AOL. DDG is far left so that’s unfortunate they acquired Yippy
There is no reason to remove the article. At least we have some review of how it was and someone else could develop a similar useful search engine. Secondly, there is useful discussion underneath.
Hello, Liam. You are right. We have noted out that as of April 21, Yippy no longer works and redirects to DuckDuckGo. We will definitely have a better look at your suggested search engines.
I used Yippy more for the fact the results I actually wanted were listed AT THE TOP more frequently than any other search engines, similar to Copernic, a paid engine out of Canada, that I only stopped using when its site shut down, and I switched to Yippy FROM DUCKDUCKGO, so a return there for me is unlikely. I am now using Dogpile, though I am looking for something “better” as my biggest complaint is the frequency with which the top “results” are actually links to other searches, i.e., I must HUNT for the results I actually want, just like Google, but at least it IS NOT GOOGLE.
Dogpile is owned by System1, an ad company. But Waterfox is also owned by them, but haven’t modified the browser in any way.
Yippy was a metasearch engine that groups search results into clusters.[1][2] It was originally developed and released by Vivísimo in 2004 under the name Clusty, before Vivisimo was later acquired by IBM and Yippy was sold in 2010 to a company now called Yippy, Inc. At the time, the website received 100,000 unique visitors a month. Yippy’s domain and technology assets were sold to DuckDuckGo in 2021, and the website was promptly shut down.
Copied from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yippy
A wiki “user” called 68DUCK conveniently REMOVED the statement about DuckDuckGo BUYING and SHUTTING DOWN Yippy.
Seriously.
Given wiki has become a big part of the 1984 world we’re all dealing with I thought I’d post this update here as a breadcrumb of reality for those interested.
So do they continue to provide paid services if they dropped the public one or they drop that as well?
Hey, Juandev. It appears that all Yippy services have been dropped.
I just read an article that suggested duckduckgo is not tracking users itself, but was allowing “some other” company to do so as they saw 2 cookies built directly into the code. I am not surprised we are all being redirected from a site we knew was not tracking us (Yippy) to one many of us used to or in some cases still trust.
I was searching for news about yippy.com and landed here. I am sorry no one commenting knows what is going on either. It was helpful to read all the comments and to realize that others liked Yippy too and were also dismayed by its sudden disappearance.
I will try the other search engines mentioned here. I am both glad and disappointed to discover the Yippy used Bing as its information source. I thought it was independent and different. But now I know to use Bing to get the same results.
By the way, the company’s stock is still being traded as of April 30; it uses YIPI
Yippy will not be traded after sept 28th.
Well, it does not matter much if it uses Bing anonymously. It can then get good results. I wonder having your own search engine is expensive.
Not promising that the YippyInc.com support portal (https://support.yippyinc.com/portal) is going to Error 522. I can’t find anything definitive on what’s happened with Yippy. For now, trying Swisscows.com, and Qwant.com
I’ve tried Startpage, but wasn’t terribly impressed. Swisscows isn’t bad though. Qwant is slow.
Same here. But I would still miss Yippy. Its clusters fit more to my needs than AI-generated keywords on Swisscows.
Yippy was the only Search that did not Censor & gave us the hard core Truths. 3 mos ago someone put Censored LIES on Yippys top search links & you had to scroll way down to get to the Truth links. (Google loves to Hide & Censor Truth) DuckDuckGo-Yahoo-Bing- ALL Search Engines hide/censor the Truth from us- Google Controls them. ByeBye YIPPY you were the BEST and gave us the TRUTH UNCENSORED- Thank You Yippy.com
WELL SAID! So unfortunate that YIPPY is gone.
Would be nice to have some definitive info. I had made the move to using only Yippy, much preferred it to any others, especially the big ones. Hope it is just temporary for upgrades.
Gee I thought it was just me. Wonder if YIPPY will ever run again.
Me too… Redirects to duckduckgo…. Also tried VPN, still redirects to duckduckgo……
yippy is still down for me and turning off vpn makes no difference. It redirects to duck duck go.
yippy at least respected the + in front of a word as must have. the Duck has been ignoring those for some time now. Vale Yippy, gone to the graveyard where the King Alta-Vista resides. not nice to go straight to duckduckgo without so much as a redirect message. so Microshaftish bundling style..
I see google keeps try to push me to Duck duck go but Google also owns DDG. Is there another I can use that’s not own by Google or MS ?
Try Lilo.
Hey, Jimmy. DuckDuckGo is not owned by Google. In fact, it’s one of their biggest competitors in the search engine market. But if you’re looking for alternatives, I’d recommend trying out Startpage, Qwant, Ecosia, or Searx.
Correct Ethan- In some of DDG online Twitter ads It says you can’t trust Google even in private mode- I don’t think that would be the case if they were owned by Google?
Does anyone else agree that is misinformation by Jimmy R? Don’t know his motive or agenda or just doesn’t understand if you put DDG into ANY search engine it will send you to what you asked the search to do- Even if you ask just for top PRIVATE search engines it will give you a list which DDG usually is at the top often-