What a default search engine keeps.
A mainstream search engine tied to an account you are signed into can keep a running record of what you search, timestamped and linked to that account, used to shape future results and to build an advertising profile over time. Signed out, the same engine can still recognise the device through a cookie or a fingerprint, so search history is not only an account level setting, it is a browser and device level habit too.
That record tends to be more detailed than people expect, since it includes not just the search term itself but the time it was typed, the device it came from, and often which result was eventually clicked. Reviewed together over months, it can sketch a fairly accurate outline of daily routines, interests and even travel plans, all built from queries that felt entirely throwaway at the time each one was typed.
What a privacy focused search engine changes.
A handful of search engines are built specifically around not keeping that record. DuckDuckGo does not log search terms tied to an identifiable user. Startpage returns Google's own results through a proxy that strips identifying information before the request reaches Google. Brave Search runs its own independent index rather than routing through another provider at all. None of them claim to make you invisible online, they simply remove the search engine itself as a place where a long term profile accumulates.
Each takes a slightly different approach to the same underlying goal. Startpage suits anyone who wants Google's specific result quality without the account level logging behind it, since the results are close to identical. DuckDuckGo and Brave Search suit anyone happy to use a genuinely separate index, trading a small amount of local relevance for not depending on a mainstream provider's infrastructure at all.
What you trade away for it.
Results can differ slightly from a mainstream engine, particularly for very local or very recent queries, since some of that accuracy comes from the profile being built in the first place. Search suggestions as you type may feel less tailored at first, precisely because nothing has been learned about your habits yet. For most everyday searches, including looking up a companion filed under age 26 to 29 or one filed under brunette, the difference is small enough that most people stop noticing it within a week.
Setting one as your actual default.
Changing the search engine used by the address bar, not just visiting the site directly, is the step people usually skip. In Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge this lives under the browser's own search settings, usually labelled Search Engine or Default Search, with the new choice added to a short list and set as default from there. Once set, typing a query directly into the address bar routes through the new engine automatically, without needing to open its website first.
On a phone the choice lives inside each individual browser rather than as one system wide preference, so an iPhone using both Safari and Chrome needs the engine set separately in each, and the same is true of an Android phone running more than one browser side by side.
A voice assistant is a separate question entirely.
Asking a question out loud through a phone's built in assistant usually routes through that assistant's own default search provider, entirely separate from whichever search engine has been set inside the browser itself. Changing the browser default has no effect here, so anyone who relies on voice search regularly needs to check the assistant's own settings as a separate step if the same privacy goal applies to spoken queries too.
Where this fits around a booking.
Searching for our companions, reading through the rates page, or looking into an evening booked as duo with a friend visiting Amsterdam Oost all work exactly the same through a private search engine as through a mainstream one. Nothing about the booking process changes, only what the search engine itself keeps afterwards.
A realistic view of what this achieves.
A private search engine narrows one specific channel, the record a search provider keeps of what you look for, without touching your internet provider's own visibility or a site's own logs once you land on it. Paired with cookie consent choices and a habit of opening a private window for anything you would prefer stayed off the ordinary history list, it forms one solid layer among several rather than a single fix on its own.
It is worth treating as a permanent change rather than something switched on only for occasional use. The benefit of a search engine that avoids building a profile comes precisely from consistency, since a habit used only sometimes still leaves the mainstream engine with a fairly complete record for every other search made around it.