I tried making my own search engine based on Nutch (sometime around 2000).
We created a directory of sites, with a strict selection, because. had experience in administering Dmoz, but these sites that were added to our catalog were indexed. Not deep, just 1 click from the main page.
But then we did not have enough capacity to carry out a good search.
Now I’m thinking about getting back to it. As part of one project that I am writing now (MIT license. Directory example: https://libarea.ru/web). We are experimenting, learning, facets for navigation, we will fasten the search later, there is still a lot of work.
Sorry if I upset anyone, but why DDG does not cut it? I’ve been using it so far, and the !bangs are one thing I’d miss in any search engine nowadays which I never found. I’ve tried Ecosia, but as an Engineer who doesn’t want to waste time, I’ve missed the !bangs
Not at all; there are tons of newish engines out there, the best of which are trying to carve out a niche for themselves in an area that Google and Bing ignore. I listed 44 English engines with their own indexes, along with some for other languages which I’m unfortunately unable to review because I don’t speak the langs required.
On these engines, you won’t get far if you use natural language queries or expect the engine to make inferences. Use broad terms and keywords instead. I recommend giving Mojeek, Marginalia, Teclis, Petal (bad privacy, but usable through Searx), Kagi, and Alexandria a try.
Petal Search. A search engine by Huawei that recently switched from searching for Android apps to general search in order to reduce dependence on Western search providers. Despite its surprisingly good results, I wouldn’t recommend it due to privacy concerns…
*lists Google Search, the most antiprivacy search engine by an advertising company*
I said that about Petal because readers likely hadn’t heard of it and didn’t have any expectations. l assume readers already knew Bing, Google, and Yandex were bad for privacy.
It seems search engines are becoming less important for researching online, we now focus more on social media or specific websites. Often, I search directly on reddit, imdb, twitter or mastodon, spotify, youtube, stack overflow etc. For the rest, I use Qwant as the main and I’m quite ok with it
really? My search hasn’t shifted away from search engines at all. Most search on those platforms only directs you towards some engaging content, but not what I am looking for.
Also to maybe answer your question a little bit better: Yes, good search engines are rare. Just looking at quality, google has become worse over the years, bing and other corporate google clones have adopted the strategy of not showing pirating websites and such in search results etc.
Alternative search engines have never been that good. There is YaCy, but it’s old and takes many resources while not delivering results like we are used to.
Frontends like searx are just a proxy to one of the big search engines and will always get shut down once they have a lot of traffic. Startpage is a kind of frontend as well, but I guess they have some kind of deal with google or something??
I just use MetaGer and rely on keywords search…
I think for my next project I’m gunna be looking into setting up topic focused search engines, particularly for substance use and harm reduction.
https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~muuo/blog/build-yourself-a-mini-search-engine/
Doesn’t seem too hard, has anyone ever done something like this? Curious about overhead costs and the like.
I tried making my own search engine based on Nutch (sometime around 2000).
We created a directory of sites, with a strict selection, because. had experience in administering Dmoz, but these sites that were added to our catalog were indexed. Not deep, just 1 click from the main page.
But then we did not have enough capacity to carry out a good search.
Now I’m thinking about getting back to it. As part of one project that I am writing now (MIT license. Directory example: https://libarea.ru/web). We are experimenting, learning, facets for navigation, we will fasten the search later, there is still a lot of work.
Searx.
Sorry if I upset anyone, but why DDG does not cut it? I’ve been using it so far, and the !bangs are one thing I’d miss in any search engine nowadays which I never found. I’ve tried Ecosia, but as an Engineer who doesn’t want to waste time, I’ve missed the !bangs
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DDG censors Russian websites. For me thats a complete disqualification.
Don’t !bangs work in Searx either? At least in searx.ebnar.xyz they do.
I’ve tried a few bangs like
!ghcode <some_code>and it doesn’t seem to work out, is it something I have to enable?SearXNG is quite awesome, thanks for this one
Maybe this helps: https://searx.github.io/searx/user/search_syntax.html
It still has limited features compared to DDG, and it has a different syntax.
you need to use “!” twice,
!!ghcode <some_code>.thanks! that helped 😎
Not at all; there are tons of newish engines out there, the best of which are trying to carve out a niche for themselves in an area that Google and Bing ignore. I listed 44 English engines with their own indexes, along with some for other languages which I’m unfortunately unable to review because I don’t speak the langs required.
On these engines, you won’t get far if you use natural language queries or expect the engine to make inferences. Use broad terms and keywords instead. I recommend giving Mojeek, Marginalia, Teclis, Petal (bad privacy, but usable through Searx), Kagi, and Alexandria a try.
The hypocrisy in that statement is unreal…
I said that about Petal because readers likely hadn’t heard of it and didn’t have any expectations. l assume readers already knew Bing, Google, and Yandex were bad for privacy.
Im also curious what those privacy concerns are. Hopefully not just “China bad”.
This is their privacy policy: https://h5hosting-dra.dbankcdn.com/cch5/petalsearch/global/agreement/privacy-statement.htm?language=en-us
It includes detailed fingerprinting metrics like mouse behavior and font information.
I should probably link it, thanks for the feedback.
The key (for google) is to use search parameters. Such as…
And Startpage gives the same results as Google, but without trackers or AMP results (via an automatic proxy)
I had some trouble adopting Searx, but once I found out about Searxng I was able to handle that. A little bit of presentation made the difference.
It seems search engines are becoming less important for researching online, we now focus more on social media or specific websites. Often, I search directly on reddit, imdb, twitter or mastodon, spotify, youtube, stack overflow etc. For the rest, I use Qwant as the main and I’m quite ok with it
really? My search hasn’t shifted away from search engines at all. Most search on those platforms only directs you towards some engaging content, but not what I am looking for.
I’m using searx for at least a year now and it’s great.
I also heard recommendation about whoogle, and you can also check out brave search.
As of now? Searx is the one I would recommend! (And I’ve tried almost everything)
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Also to maybe answer your question a little bit better: Yes, good search engines are rare. Just looking at quality, google has become worse over the years, bing and other corporate google clones have adopted the strategy of not showing pirating websites and such in search results etc.
Alternative search engines have never been that good. There is YaCy, but it’s old and takes many resources while not delivering results like we are used to.
Frontends like searx are just a proxy to one of the big search engines and will always get shut down once they have a lot of traffic. Startpage is a kind of frontend as well, but I guess they have some kind of deal with google or something??
As far as I remember, Startpage buys result from the Google
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Maybe donation or something? Btw, I don’t recommend Startpage though
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I think startpage.com is pretty good and reliable
StartPage was purchased by System1, a US ad-tech firm. Might want to keep an eye out for any policy changes.
yes I know. Still I lack a good alternative
Tried searx.be with some User Interface modification?
can I make it look like startpage ?
Yep! Go to preferences > User Interface > Theme > and select “simple”. Then scroll down and click “Save”. Now it should look something like this :