In this paper, a conscious neighborhood-based crow search algorithm (CCSA) is proposed for solving global optimization and engineering design problems. It is a successful improvement to tackle the imbalance search strategy and premature convergence problems of the crow search algorithm. CCSA introduces three new search strategies called neighborhood-based local search (NLS), nonneighborhood based global search (NGS) and wandering around based search (WAS) in order to improve the movement of crows in different search spaces. Moreover, a neighborhood concept is defined to select the movement strategy between NLS and NGS consciously, which enhances the balance between local and global search. The proposed CCSA is evaluated on several benchmark functions and four applied problems of engineering design. In all experiments, CCSA is compared by other state-of-the-art swarm intelligence algorithms: CSA, BA, CLPSO, GWO, EEGWO, WOA, KH, ABC, GABC, and Best-so-far ABC. The experimental and statistical results show that CCSA is very competitive especially for large-scale optimization problems, and it is significantly superior to the compared algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm also finds the best optimal solution for the applied problems of engineering design.