The search engine Ixquick.eu will start to redirect to the search engine Startpage.com later today.

The privacy-focused search engines are maintained by the privately owned Dutch company Surfboard Holdings B.V. One of the company's main goals is to deliver "the most relevant search results under the largest possible umbrella of privacy" to users.

The motivation behind the move is to focus on a single brand and domain to increase efficiency.

We reviewed Ixquick Search back in 2012 for the first time and followed the rise of privacy-focused search engines like Ixquick, Startpage or DuckDuckGo since.

Ixquick and Startpage used two different sources for search results initially. Whereas Startpage used Google as its source, Ixquick used a number of sources and used ranking algorithms to rank the data it retrieved from its sources.

xquick was merged with Startpage back in 2016. While the service maintained its own domain address, name and design, it delivered the same set of results as Startpage as of 2016.

The redirect of the Ixquick.eu domain to Startpage.com marks the next step in the process. Ixquick will redirect to Startpage automatically; the change won't impact search results, as those are already identical.

In fact, the only change that Ixquick users may notice is that searches run on startpage.com now and that the search engine's name changed from "Startpage by ixquick" to "Startpage".

Company engineers have implemented the quick answers feature on Startpage which returns direct answers or information to queries directly. Startpage plans to expand the functionality by adding more sources in the coming months.

The company has big plans for Startpage. It plans to launch a new look and new features this year, and improve existing features such as the service's privacy proxy which you may use to access results through a proxy to protect your privacy.

Startpage announced the change last week on the official company blog.