San Francisco, Apr 16 (IANS): Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo has reportedly removed the search results for many popular pirate sites.

The sites include The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and Fmovies. Several YouTube ripping services have disappeared too and even the homepage of the open-source software youtube-mp3 is unavailable, reports TorrentFreak.

Launched in 2008, the search engine DuckDuckGo is a go-to service for Internet users who value their privacy.

Unlike many competitors, the site does not keep a record of users' IP addresses or other sensitive information.

In recent years, the site also stood out by returning cleaner results than competitors such as Google, which actively alters its algorithms to downrank pirate sites.

At one point, Google even pointed users to DuckDuckGo when they searched for Pirate Bay proxies, the report said.

Recently, the search engine has launched an all-new browser for macOS in beta.

The company had said that like its mobile app, DuckDuckGo for Mac is an all-in-one privacy solution for everyday browsing with no complicated settings.