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

    • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      1·
      4 hours ago

      If you set it as your default search in chrome or such, it will convert the Google search bar in Android to a SearXNG search bar. I started using it a little while back. Firefox never did well for me on Android (I’m sure it’s anecdotal)

  • OfficerBribe@lemm.ee
    112·
    19 hours ago

    Aren’t all search queries available to whoever hosts an instance? In my eyes this is much worse to privacy and a much bigger risk unless you really know who is behind your chosen instance. I would trust some a company a bit more with safeguarding this information so it does not leak to some random guy.

    • sandwichsaregood@lemmy.world
      7·
      8 hours ago

      I’ve always gotten the impression it was mostly intended to be self hosted. I’ve self hosted it for something like a couple years now, runs like a clock. It still strips out tracking and advertising, even if you don’t get the crowd anonymity of a public instance.

      • Derp@lemmy.ml
        41·
        4 hours ago

        A VPN will not save you, they are easily worse for privacy in terms of user tracking. It centralises your entire web traffic in a single place for the VPN provider to track (and potentially sell).

      • Derp@lemmy.ml
        3·
        4 hours ago

        Of course it can be done, check your web server logs.

        If you are using GET requests to send search queries to searxng, what you searched for will show up in the logs as

        2024-10-31 123.321.0.100 /?query=kinky+furry+pictures

        If you use POST requests the server admin can also easily enable logging those.

        People hosting searxng can absolutely see what you searched for, along with your IP address, user agent string etc.

      • OfficerBribe@lemm.ee
        1·
        4 hours ago

        Thanks for clarification and great that this is not included in project, but couldn’t someone change the server side code and somehow see more info that goes through?

        I know there is that HTML check in https://searx.space/ to see if search interface code is not heavily modified, but on server side anything could go on.

        If requests are encrypted in a way that searxng does not see contents then it probably is not trivial to do, but there always is a possibility something clever could be done.

      • tooclose104@lemmy.ca
        13·
        13 hours ago

        It doesn’t bother me one bit of you know my search history. You’ll learn I search a word to see if I know your to spell it properly and that I DIY a lot of stuff lol

  • Mandy@sh.itjust.works
    12·
    21 hours ago

    Man, i wish i had the same experiencr

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

  • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
    82·
    21 hours ago

    Been rocking self-hosted Searxng for the last 3 weeks now as my default search engine; it’s as good or better than DDG and certainly better than Google. Results I need are usually within the first three items, no extraneous shit.

    I thought I’d just try it out, but it’s staying. The ability to tune the background engines is awesome. My search history is private (though I wasn’t that worried about DDG, there was no way in fuck I was using Kagi) since it’s running it’s searches via a VPN and returning me results locally.

    • Anon518@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      it’s as good or better than

      It’s only as good as the search engines you select. Which ones have you selected?

    • x00z@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      19 hours ago

      Keep in mind that to protect your privacy you should also share your instance with others. All the searches are still linked to an IP which can be abused as well.

      • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        21·
        19 hours ago

        Yes, that’s the purpose of the VPN. It’s out there mixed in with everyone else that’s using that exit node.

        Honestly, it’s not too much of a concern to me, I’m not doing anything illegal or naughty, it’s just making sure I’m not part of the dataset.

    • Corgana@startrek.website
      1·
      20 hours ago

      How does it work self hosting? Is it querying other search engines or just maintaining a database on your server?

      • yonder@sh.itjust.works
        2·
        13 hours ago

        It’s a meta search engine: it aggregates results from multiple sources for your search query. So yes, it queries other search engines.

      • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        20 hours ago

        Its all calls to other engines, that you can choose and tune. So its making those calls and filtering out shit like AI results, and then ranking it to return back to you. Seems to do a good job.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
    3·
    4 hours ago

    Can someone explain the meaning of the name and the people building this project please?

    You’re trusting how information is filtered and funneled to you with a search tool, but a change to take lightly. Google sucks, but they have a lot to lose, a lot of eyes on them and I know generally their base motivations.

    • boonhet@lemm.ee
      4·
      19 hours ago

      Fortunately, you can read through the source code of SearxNG and even modify it - provided that you also publish the modified version to your users if you host it publicly.

      You can run your own instance, public or private. Or you can use a public instance.

      Internally, it uses other search engines, rather than crawling the entire web and indexing everything.

  • Shareni@programming.dev
    4·
    22 hours 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.

    • RBG@discuss.tchncs.de
      2·
      7 hours 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.

        • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
          41·
          18 hours 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.

  • username@lemm.eeEspañol
    11·
    1 day ago

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

  • ad_on_is@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    21 hours ago

    I have it running on my server, and honestly… I almost love it more than kagi. Still evaluating both, to make a decision by the end of the year.

  • Kaiyo@lemmy.world
    495·
    2 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

    • Steve@communick.newsEnglish
      641·
      2 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
        213·
        1 day 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

        • Steve@communick.newsEnglish
          3·
          21 hours 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
          61·
          24 hours 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?

        • Eugenia@lemmy.mlEnglish
          42·
          1 day 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
              11·
              5 hours 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
                2·
                5 hours 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
                  1·
                  5 hours 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!

    • JustMarkov@lemmy.mlEnglish
      17·
      2 days ago

      Mojeek is cool, but trying to search something in my first language results in 0 results find.

    • ColdWater@lemmy.caOP
      4·
      2 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
        21·
        2 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

  • Matt@lemmy.ml
    2·
    1 day ago

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

  • Dyskolos@lemmy.zip
    1·
    24 hours ago

    Using it on my own server since… Ages ☺️ Can only recommend it. Even though google’s results are often… Weird up to completely unhelpful.