BOSTON - March 26, 2021 - Lynn Bentley, President of Knobull announced, "Though most people tend to use commercial search engines for web searches, Knobull Academic Search is an alternative search engine that is favored by users who want to find academic sources and preserve their online privacy. Google and other common search tools capture a lot of information about you when you perform a search. Much of this information is provided to advertisers or passed on to other websites. Knobull, however, has a policy of not tracking its users – it doesn't collect personal information, use cookies, or capture your IP address.
Because Knobull doesn't create a user profile, that means we help you escape the "filter bubble" created by other search engines. We provide the exact same search results to all users, rather than customizing your results based on your previous search history or personal preferences. That makes the search engine a good choice for users trying to perform research on a topic that's easily influenced by commercial clutter."
It's also worth noting that Knobull is substantially more private than using Google with your web browser's InPrivate or Incognito mode. Your activity while in Incognito mode can still be tracked and identified by search engines, so Knobull is a better choice for avoiding the limitations of that browser setting.
The Knobull search page is very similar to Google, with a single field to enter your search. The results are aggregated from millions of academic sources, including its search service Refseek's own web crawler, along with Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, specialty services like Wolfram Alpha, and others.
You can use the academic links label under the search bar to customize and fine-tune your academic search targets. Depending on your search, you might also use the Contact page in the menu area. This provides what Knobull team thinks may be the best answer to your query or academic guidance questions.
Knobull projects being profitable based mostly on student news and secure academic search promotions, though has always been on the search for other ways to make money. The other way found so far, which will accounts for a much of the revenue, is non-tracking affiliate partnerships with Amazon and Walmart.
Bentley concluded, "When you visit those sites through Knobull, including when using direct links and subsequently make a purchase, we will receive a small commission. This mechanism will operate anonymously and there will not be any personally identifiable information exchanged between us and Amazon or Walmart. These partnerships also don't affect the ranking of search results. The reason we can do this in an anonymous way with Amazon and Walmart, though not with other retailers, is because they've run their own affiliate networks."
