The present invention provides a search apparatus, method and program using a public search engine, which is capable of acquiring necessary information without allowing confidential information to be inferred. Input of a desired search word comprising characters is received, and characters are extracted from the search word. Multiple character strings comprising the extracted characters are generated. A word is selected as a noise word, and characters are selected from the noise word. A noise character string comprising the extracted characters is generated. A query is generated by combining the character strings and noise character strings, and is transmitted to the search engine. A search is performed by use of the search word over a search result transmitted from the search engine in reply to the query, and the search result is displayed.