diff --git a/searx/engines/startpage.py b/searx/engines/startpage.py
index 70b193952..d60ecd978 100644
--- a/searx/engines/startpage.py
+++ b/searx/engines/startpage.py
@@ -10,7 +10,6 @@
 #
 # @todo        paging
 
-from urllib import urlencode
 from lxml import html
 from cgi import escape
 import re
@@ -38,7 +37,6 @@ link_xpath = './/h3/a'
 # do search-request
 def request(query, params):
     offset = (params['pageno'] - 1) * 10
-    query = urlencode({'q': query})[2:]
 
     params['url'] = search_url
     params['method'] = 'POST'