actually awesome and fast search engine (depending on which instance you use) with no trashy AI and ADs results also great for privacy, if you don’t know which instance to use go to https://searx.space/ and choose an instance closest to you

  • Kaiyo@lemmy.world
    0·
    24 days ago

    I mean it’s often better than nothing, but it is a meta search that still often uses Google or Bing to gather results. IMHO, cut off the need for that data on the whole and use an option like Mojeek

    • ColdWater@lemmy.caOP
      0·
      24 days ago

      You can use Mojeek with SearX Nvm with nothing enabled but Mojeek returned no results, I wonders why is that?

      • ColdWater@lemmy.caOP
        0·
        24 days ago

        I could be wrong but didn’t Mojeek also index results from Google and Bing? I’m wrong they index their own results, I mean Qwant is a search engine built in EU and they index their own results

    • Steve@communick.newsEnglish
      0·
      24 days ago

      For all their talk of doing things different with their own index and rankings. Mojeek is following exactly what Google did. It’s still an ad based business model that makes users into products to be sold to advertisers. They’re good now, while still trying to build market share. But once their investors get hungry, the enshitification will commence.

      • Mojeek Search Engine@lemmy.ml
        0·
        23 days ago

        we make money mainly from our api, our investors are patient private capital and we don’t take vc, appreciate your point but these are fundamentally different situations, our ads (when they run) will also be contextual so more of a ddg situation than a “makes users into products to be sold to advertisers”

        fair enough if it’s not for you though

        • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          23 days ago

          Do you have topics that are censored? I searched for my reddit post “what I’ve learnt from the mantis aliens”, and it does not show up in your results. Neither at google’s. But it does on other search engines. The ufo/alien stuff are censored in most search engines, while there isn’t a reason to be. That is how I judge search engines. And Mojeek doesn’t give me the results I asked for.

            • notfromhere@lemmy.ml
              0·
              22 days ago

              Is that legally binding? What happens of they catch you, ban your IPs then you’re in the same situation as now. Literally no reason to not do it IMO.

              • Mojeek Search Engine@lemmy.ml
                0·
                22 days ago

                IP already hits a wall, also better to not get a reputation as a bad bot, it’s taken a while to get known for being friendly and respecting rules, to us you should follow robots

                • notfromhere@lemmy.ml
                  0·
                  22 days ago

                  I seem to recall creative ways to index things without robots, e.g. browser addon that users opt into to send pages and such, essentially crowdsourcing the indexing. Anyways good to see you’re taking the high road!

        • Steve@communick.newsEnglish
          0·
          23 days ago

          API index access is an important difference.
          If it was only that, without public facing ad driven search, I’d be more impressed.

          Maybe if you removed the adds, and severely rate limited your own public facing search, so it’s more of a demo than an actual service. This would force you to solely make money off the API access, without directly competing against those customers.

          That would be an honest buisness model. One that doesn’t turn users into eyeballs for advertising. Which seems to me, to be the most insidious problem of the modern internet.

        • pinkystew@reddthat.comEnglish
          0·
          23 days ago

          I don’t know if the comparison is inaccurate.

          You make money from advertising to your users (“ddg situation” notwithstanding), are beholden to your investors (private status notwithstanding) and need to see more users to increase revenue. The person above you is saying that this model is what will drive you to eventually be as bad as Google. Do you understand?

    • ColdWater@lemmy.caOP
      0·
      24 days ago

      I never use DDG before, but I think it’s pretty similar since DDG and SearX index their results from Bing (SearX and also index from Google, qwant… if you enable them), but SearX is decentralized and open source but DDG at core is not, you also have to trust DDG with your info (who know? maybe they lie about their privacy policy but I hope not)

  • The Doctor@beehaw.orgEnglish
    0·
    24 days ago

    It’s pretty nice. The REST API for running searches makes running SearxNG worth it, if nothing else.

  • ben_dover@lemmy.ml
    0·
    24 days ago

    have been using it for a while on my mobile and so far i like it better than ddg or startpage

  • sga@lemmy.world
    0·
    24 days ago

    If you are on a desktop, you can run it locally, you are much less likely to be rate limited, but this comes at cost of your ip being still visible to google or whatever search engine you choose to scrape from

      • WalnutLum@lemmy.ml
        0·
        24 days ago

        It’s your queries + your IP combined with the rest of the data the net collects from you that identifies you.

          • sga@lemmy.world
            0·
            24 days ago

            I completely agree with you, and what i wrote was in haste, essentially, what i wanted to say, was that an individual running searxng does not provide the anonymity benefits you would get by using some public instance, but it it still better because you are not directly using google or whatever website, and now searxng kinda acts like a browser between you and them, which does limited conversation - there aren’t any js based fingerprinting. I also use searxng locally, i cant stand the constant rate limiting of public servers, or sometimes only a few engines are blocked, and variation in result quality is unacceptable to me. I just wanted to add that bit for transparency,

  • username@lemm.eeEspañol
    0·
    24 days ago

    I’d use it if its public instances didn’t get rate-limited so often

  • Anon518@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    23 days ago

    I checked it out, but most of the public instances I looked at use google + bing. I think I only came across one that used Mojeek, but they deranked it so google results were still at the top.

    Yeah you can customize them – if you never clear your cookies.

    Pretty much need to self-host it to customize it.

    • helpmyusernamewontfi@lemmy.today
      0·
      23 days ago

      if you never clear your cookies.

      They allow you to use a link instead for saving settings, which can also be used to set as your default search engine

      • Anon518@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        22 days ago

        I’m not seeing that option anywhere. Nor does it allow me to change the “weight”. I found a github discussion saying it should show up after you save the settings, but I tried that on two instances and didn’t get any unique URL.

        Ah, I found it under the “cookies” tab. Needs to be more obvious IMO.

  • Matt@lemmy.ml
    0·
    23 days ago

    Dig out old PC from somewhere, install some Linux distribution, Tailscale and Docker/Podman, and install SearX that way.

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    23 days ago

    Man, i wish i had the same experiencr

    The couple of times I tried it out, the search results where barely accurate

  • Shareni@programming.dev
    0·
    23 days ago

    It’s ok at best, when it works. When it runs out of API hits for the day at noon, you need to use something like https://searx.neocities.org/ and retype your search multiple times until you manage to hit an instance that can actually perform a search.

    Also, no suggestions.

        • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          23 days ago

          Not if it runs the queries it sends out via a VPN where it mingles with thousands of other requests. An API call doesn’t have the disadvantages of browser fingerprinting, cookies, etc that are used to build a background of a user browsing to your search engine and track their searches. Also, there is no feedback to the search engine about which result you choose to use. If you allow outside users, it would further muddy the waters.

          Ideally, you’d have it run random searches when not being used to further obfuscate the source.

    • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
      0·
      22 days ago

      I use this daily and just wanted to highlight two downsides:

      • 1 some instances are quite slow in response

      • 2 some instances are non English, so everything except search results might be unreadable unless you know that language

      The second one has been happening less frequently recently though, not sure if there are just more English instances or some other reason behind it.