A processor-implemented method for policy-based search privacy is provided, including a search privacy module and one or more privacy policy configurations. The privacy policy configurations include at least one semantic domain, at least one semantic scope, at least one semantic domain database, and at least one lexical database. A web search is intercepted. The search terms in the web search are compared to the semantic domain in the privacy policy configuration. If a match is found, a query is submitted to the semantic domain database to retrieve keywords within a number of levels of the semantic domain, as specified by the semantic scope. The search privacy module generates web searches that are semantically similar to the desired web search, using the retrieved keywords. These generated web searches are submitted to the search engine along with the desired web search.