Dogpile is a beautiful and also enlightened search engine that compiles results from other search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. As the site collates results from multiple search engines, determines which ones are most relevant to your search, and then removes duplicates before presenting you with your options. The idea here is that you will get more specific results for your search faster than if you used any other search engine. The name "dogpile" is actually a rugby term, despite the brand's illustrations of dogs (it's Arfie the mascot, by the way), which refers to players piled on top of each other. The branding here is confusing, since the name refers to a sport, plus the illustrations and "Go find it!" The search buttons are related to animals... but we can go further there.
Dogpile displays popular search results as users' preferred picks (Image credit: Dogpile)
Features
The suggested searches, called Preferred Retrieves, seem to take into account what may be of interest to people now. For example, in August XNUMX, Favorite Fetches listed "affordable flights," "portable air conditioners," and "leasing a car," presumably because travel was on many people's minds. It's kind of helpful if you're looking for any of those things, but the section isn't entirely accurate. Other search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo, have not suggested such searches, probably because they do not provide as much value to the user.
Privacy
When it comes to data protection and privacy, Dogpile is not the search engine to choose if you prefer anonymity. First, they don't have their data collection practices explained in easy terms in an easily accessible area: you have to dig into their privacy policies to locate them, and even when you do, there's a lot to reckon with. What they collect through Dogpile and how they use it is not entirely clear. Dogpile is subject to System1's privacy policy and System1 aggregates a lot of information about , including personally identifiable data (name, address, etc.) and also computer/Internet information (browser, equipment, IP address, etc.). This information is not only collected when you provide it, but is also collected automatically when you use System1's services and through System1's business associates and third-party distributors. When it comes to your online activity in particular, System1 also employs trackers (cookies and web beacons, to be precise) to compile location, referral and traffic data from your browsing actions. And while this information is not always and in all circumstances linked to your personal information, it can be. Does that mean the company does what it wants with your most personal data? No, they still meet the legal requirements to collect and share data. But Dogpile is not as secure as those browsers and search engines that don't even know who you are or what you do because they believe in maximum privacy for their users.
Dogpile's search bar is basic with just tabs for web, images, videos, news, and shopping (Image credit: Dogpile)
User Experience
The search bar is as basic as it sounds, which makes it simple to use, but not particularly appealing. You can designate your search as web, images, videos, news, or shopping, which is pretty standard for a search engine.
Dogpile shows more search results than Google per page, but Google search results are richer (Image credit: Google / Dogpile) Using Dogpile vs Google to search for the exact same topic, the results were returned in exactly the same amount of time (in seconds, until then). And while Dogpile's layout puts results more at the top of the page than Google's, most of those top results are ads: there are a lot more ads than Google's results right at the top, which will unattractive to certain users. The good thing about Dogpile is the way the results page is presented. Search genre options and a list of recent searches are on the left side and suggested searches are in the right sidebar. This means that the main part of the page with the search results integrates more than Google.
Dogpile is a browser-only tool, so all you need to do is go to dogpile.com to use it. The company's search engine is optimized for mobile devices, so you can use it on an iPhone or Android smartphone, just like on a desktop computer.
Competition
Dogpile doesn't look as good as any of the major search engines, and its ad-rich search results are a drag even when equated with another ad-heavy search engine like Google. But its main contender comes in the form of solving Dogpile's biggest drawback: privacy. DuckDuckGo is surely Dogpile's biggest contender when it comes to online security, as the service has no online tracking and provides users with an extremely secure browsing experience. It is not clear if Dogpile is particularly dangerous, but it seems to track and use a lot of information about and your actions online, which seems like a very modern way of doing it.
Final verdict
Although Dogpile's privacy policy leaves a lot to be desired, otherwise it's not a bad search engine. Enter a search and return results - handles the basics as you'd expect. Its main downside is that it doesn't do anything particularly well or uniquely, and what it does is go from somewhat to much worse than its competition. Google results are more attractive and less advertising; Yahoo's search interface is more modern and contains news headlines instead of those superfluous suggested searches; DuckDuckGo lets you navigate without a tracker and has an intuitive mobile app. In short, there's a huge reason not to use Dogpile and no compelling reason to choose one.