
Show HN: Runnaroo – A new search engine - chris_f
https://www.runnaroo.com/
======
chris_f
Hi HN!

I'm the creator of Runnaroo. The title is a fun little rib at Neeva, which has
been getting a lot of press recently.

I initially launched Runnaroo in a Show HN [0] at the end of February, and
wanted to do a followup because the site has grown considerably in features
and users over the last fews of months.

The core idea of Runnaroo revolves around a search engine of federated data
sources to provide the most relevant and highest quality results. We are now
over 50 Deep Search sources, and adding more weekly.

Some examples of queries that I believe provide better results than peer
search engines.

react.js:
[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=react.js)

creatine effects research:
[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=creatine+effects+resear...](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=creatine+effects+research)

metallica tabs:
[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=Metallica+tabs](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=Metallica+tabs)

parkinson podcast:
[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=parkinson+podcast](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=parkinson+podcast)

bootstrap collapse link:
[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=bootstrap+collapse+link](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=bootstrap+collapse+link)

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22422604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22422604)

~~~
temp231239
One think that I would like to see solved by indie search engines is the
ability to break the search bubble and see whats usually hidden on 10th page
of google search results. This is a serious problem in all big search engines.

One interesting way to solve search bubble problem is to have an option to
filter out results from high traffic websites and blogs who invest heavily in
CEO and pollute search results.

Having this filter will surely open a completely different world of
information that's very hard to search.

~~~
Flashtoo
> have an option to filter out results from high traffic websites

That's what Million Short does
[https://millionshort.com/](https://millionshort.com/)

~~~
Darkphibre
Good grief, this is astonishing. The other day I tried tracking down the names
for various avatar species in VRChat. Surely someone had a list curated... but
bing, google, and ddg all let me down with ancient wikis or completely
unrelated sites, no matter my quoting or alternate search terms (animals,
avatars, creatures, etc.).

Very first hit on millionshort:
[https://www.vrcarena.com/](https://www.vrcarena.com/)

Edit: Though, I'm still trying to track down a more comprehensive list. That
one's missing Nanachis, which are rather common these days.

~~~
leereeves
That's also the first hit on DDG for avatar species in VRChat

[https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=avatar+species+in+VRChat&ia...](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=avatar+species+in+VRChat&ia=web)

~~~
Darkphibre
I don't know what to say. Yesterday, for me, it was no where on the first few
pages.

------
reaperducer
_Deep Searching: the inclusion of relevant results from other targeted search
engines to deliver better results quicker._

That doesn't sound like "deep" searching to me. That sounds like search
aggregation, like DogPile used to do a couple of decades ago.

To me, "deep searching" would mean the company has its own crawler that
indexes the content that the other search engines ignore or discard because it
hasn't been updated in the last six hours. The world is losing its
knowledgebase because companies like Google only care about what's trending,
not what's information.

I want a search engine that shows me all the things that Google has decided
aren't important because they're not trendy. Show me the stale web. Show me
things that are so good they don't need to be repackaged every six months.
Show me hobby sites, reference sites, stores of knowledge that don't exist
solely to play the SEO game. Show me things I can't get anywhere else.

I'll give Runnaroo a chance. Hopefully it doesn't disappoint. The world
doesn't need another bubblegum search engine.

~~~
gverrilla
Maybe reverse-SEO would be good: list higher those sites with less SEO-
complicance lol

I have an analogy:

I'm new to programming and have been trying to build a web app using python. I
went through a lot of websites and youtube videos, and the most fancy-looking
ones where more often than not incomplete or bad. When there was a video and
the "youtuber" would hit me asking for subscription or like all the time, or
fancy 3d animations etc, I would know quality of content itself probably
wouldn't be very good. Not to my surprise, the best tutorial I have found
features a guy with his webcam only, with nothing fancy at all - you might
call it a sloppy "production", if you want, but it's far better than anything
else I've seen! - and it was never a top ranked search for my queries oon
google. For anyone wondering, I'm talking about grinberg's mega-tutorial on
flask ([https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com](https://blog.miguelgrinberg.com)).

~~~
mikalauskas
I would say, his videos are far from sloppy. High quality microphone and video
itself is pretty fancy.

------
mttjj
Looks nice, thanks for sharing. I do find the three pieces of configuration to
be inconsistent however. The first two have you flip a switch _on_ to turn
something _off_. "Turn Off Quick Directs" and "Turn Off Deep Searching" would
probably be better as "Quick Directs" and "Deep Searching" where the toggle
defaults to the "on" state. They look very similar to iOS controls so I think
the users' understanding of on/off state is already there.

As for the third option "Strict Search On", "On" seems redundant at best and
misleading at worst. Misleading because I'm not sure if the text is going to
change when I toggle the switch. Meaning I don't know if this is a static
label telling me what the setting is or a dynamic label telling me what the
current state is.

In summary, I would make the button text more consistent and change their
default states: [x] Quick Directs [x] Deep Searching [] Strict Search

As a side note, the controls are different on the main page vs the result
pages. On the homepage they are switches while on the results pages they are
check boxes.

~~~
chris_f
Thank you! You wouldn't believe how long I messed with that when I first set
it up. I just couldn't get it to click.

On the differences between the pages, currently in the middle of a redesign.
Everything will be consistent very soon.

------
rohan1024
This is great!

Just for test I searched for "python read command output without check_output"
and Runaroo has more relevant search than Google.

Runaroo:
[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=python+read+command+out...](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=python+read+command+output+without+check_output)

Google:
[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=pyt...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=python+read+command+output+without+check_output&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

------
chris_f
Wow!

Thank you everyone for checking Runnaroo out. I shared it this morning mostly
on a whim, and definitely did not prepare even close for the level of traffic
being on the front page of Hacker News would bring. Runnaroo has been my solo
side project for the last few months because I believed a better web search
was possible, and I greatly appreciate all the constructive feedback.

I am bringing the site down for the next few hours to address some issues, but
will have it up again soon. Apologies for any timeouts!

~~~
gremlinsinc
Do you have a starter story or something? I'd love to hear more about your
tech stack, how you source search results via api's, scraping, how much data
on serps do you store or is it mostly just in the background via api's ? I can
imagine being more like google would cost google amounts just to keep server
farms of data. How are you managing server costs is your monthly bill huge or
do you run it all on small infrastructure somehow?

I've been wanting to ship anything besides doing my freelance work, but never
get there, totally inspired to launch something this year. Thanks, for showing
what one person can build!

------
drcongo
A couple of bits of feedback: 1. The searches I tried did return decent / good
results, so well done! 2. The image search results page is not very useful /
usable - there's no keyboard navigation or filtering (add "vector" as a filter
and I'll be back regularly). 3. Dark mode would be nice. 4. What's your
business model?

~~~
chris_f
Appreciate the feedback, and I agree. The image (and news for that matter)
search tabs are now kind of just a box check, but they are both on the roadmap
to built out to be made much more usable. Adding a dark mode will be pretty
simple and I can add it to the list.

I wish something like the Web Monetization API [0] was a viable path to
monetization, but I don't think it is in the current state.

I believe the only current path to monetization that preserves user privacy is
context based display ads that work like billboards in the real world. I am
working on that now, but the idea is a flat fee to display the ad for N days
regardless of views or clicks.

[0] [https://webmonetization.org/](https://webmonetization.org/)

~~~
drkstr
FYI I would happily pay a modest yearly subscription fee to any service that
would save as much time as yours potentially does. Keep up the great work!

~~~
pedrocx486
+1, I loved how well it worked, I'd be willing to pay too.

------
nabilhat
I've been collecting upstart search engines since DDG started ignoring search
syntax instructions. It passes my first test:

[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=%22do+any+of+these+resu...](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=%22do+any+of+these+results+contain+this+text%22)

...More accurately than DDG, which returns lots of results, all of which do
not contain that text. Other searches so far have been far less swamped by
topten trash as well. Thanks! I'll add this one to my list of search engines
to try when I need accurate results.

~~~
Darkphibre
Do you have that list available anywhere? I'd be very interested in that.

------
agotterer
I searched for "common" \-
[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=common](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=common)
and noticed the first result had a json payload as the description, which
isn't visible on the site. Seems like a possible bug.

------
old-gregg
I do not know how you're doing it, but I just ran quite a few searches for
obscure film photography and chemistry topics and the results were much better
than DDG and less commercialized than Google. Very impressive!

------
yoavm
Was very skeptical - every time I try some new search engine it just gives
really bad results. Tried some quite esoteric things and was very surprised -
also for non-English content. Trying this as my default search now! Congrats.

Edit: suggestions could be useful. For now, I'm editing the Firefox plugin to
get suggestions from Google.

------
speedgoose
How to you get query results from Google without getting blocked?

~~~
wolco
Pay...

~~~
speedgoose
How? With Bing you can pay but they require you to not do anything with the
results, such as caching, filtering, sorting, removing the tracking links...
With Google it just seems not available.

~~~
Kiro
> removing the tracking links

What does this mean? I don't see any Bing tracking links on DDG.

~~~
speedgoose
The Bing search API doesn't return the real links but tracking links. I guess
DuckDuckGo or Qwant negotiated to get the real links.

------
simonw
It's a bit weird that searching for "twitter" redirects me straight to
[https://twitter.com/](https://twitter.com/) \- I understand the intent there
but I'd rather get search results - I know how to navigate using my browser
URL bar.

~~~
simonw
Looks like that's covered here already:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23771401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23771401)

------
munificent
I was wondering about the business model for this:

 _> We may also add an affiliate code to some results returned that result in
small commissions being paid back to Runnaroo if you visit or make purchases
at those sites._

I don't have an opinion on this one way or another, but it's an interesting
approach.

~~~
chris_f
I took that from one of the ways that DDG monetizes results. It's more
aspirational right now than actually in practice. I was briefly in the Amazon
affiliate program, but they told me search engines aren't allowed as part of
their TOS.

~~~
mgreg
DDG has a deal with Amazon. All product searches show Amazon up above with
payment for that. Not sure if it's exclusive or if DDG has deals with other
eCommerce players.

------
miki123211
I think there's still a lot to be done in search engines when contextual and
personalized results are concerned. I want my search engine to search not just
the public internet, but also the niche stuff only I have access to. If I type
"pizza", I want local pizzerias. If I type a name of a friend, I want to see
their Facebook profile, as well as our conversations on Messenger, Slack and
WhatsApp web. If I type "xxx crashing with code 608", where xxx is an internal
service of some organization I work for, I want to see past Github issues,
Slack conversations, Sentry reports and Jira tickets. The fact my search
engine can't search my emails, conversations and private resources makes it
much, much less useful than it could have been.

I genuinely don't understand why people dislike it so much when software
processes information about them, for their own benefit. I use Google,
Facebook etc. a lot, and I've never witnessed any bad consequences of being
tracked. If not for that strange aversion, technology could be so, so much
better.

~~~
mwcampbell
> I genuinely don't understand why people dislike it so much when software
> processes information about them, for their own benefit. I use Google,
> Facebook etc. a lot, and I've never witnessed any bad consequences of being
> tracked. If not for that strange aversion, technology could be so, so much
> better.

I think it's partly because we in the western world have a lot of exposure to
hypothetical dystopias in our entertainment and rhetoric. And that's probably
based in part on the paranoia that we had during the Cold War. I wonder if
it's different in Eastern Europe, where you are IIRC.

On a related topic, how would you feel about websites being able to know that
you're running a screen reader? In the American blind community, many have
expressed concerns about possible discrimination against blind people. I would
be in favor, but then I'm partially sighted (low vision).

~~~
miki123211
Definitely in favor, as long as I can disable that, i.e. in incognito mode.
There are some things that could work so, so much better, especially with some
modern frameworks (think Flutter) that don't render to DOM unless absolutely
necessary. There would be no accessibility mode buttons, everything would, you
know, just work.

~~~
mwcampbell
Yeah, and companies that do A/B testing of their UIs could get valuable data,
like knowing that we're actually out there trying to use their new, probably
less accessible UI.

------
darsoli
Does this use one of the bigger search engines (Bing, Google) as an API, or is
it fully custom rolled?

~~~
chris_f
For the organic web results, it is using Google right now, Any Deep Search
results provide the specific data source at the top of the result box.

~~~
mgreg
While I didn't use them and have no comments on their search quality I did
admire Cliqz for their ambition. They were building and running their own
index until earlier this year.
([https://cliqz.com/announcement.html](https://cliqz.com/announcement.html))

They open sources some components e.g. [https://github.com/cliqz-
oss/keyvi](https://github.com/cliqz-oss/keyvi).

I think any long-term search engine competitor will eventually need their own
index though DDG is doing well financially so far.

------
jedberg
A small feedback: You have a circle on the page that says "A better search
engine. Learn why →". But only the tiny text is clickable. It would be great
if that whole circle was clickable. Bigger link targets are always better.

------
DonnyV
Would love to know how they have access to Google index? Which is listed as a
source.

------
kart23
Results are really good upon first glance.

Dark mode please! Just a quick UI tip: theres a reason that neither DDG,
Google, or even HN don't have cards or separators for each result. I think the
backgrounds of each result make them all look the same, and it's kind of
impacting readability. My mind gets distracted by the rectangles and the
shadows, and its just one more thing to sort through mentally.

------
qwerty456127
IT-related search results seem super relevant. I wish other subjects would
work equally well. E.g. supplement/condition-related search could also result
in links to sites like selfhacked.com in the top (the actual articles there
include references to scientific papers to back every particular statement)
which Google actively hides from its results despite it's among my first go-
tos.

------
throwaway_pdp09
I tried searching for

cmov gcc

(url:
[https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=cmov+gcc](https://www.runnaroo.com/search?term=cmov+gcc)).
Very impressive! Actually gives me stuff that's, I dunno, relevant.

Actually included both words without me quoting them - I wish DDG did that -
you normally need to search for "gcc" "cmov".

------
dna_polymerase
Tried a few queries, and the direct redirect when I type in facebook is more
than questionable. If Google did this I couldn't properly research news or
facts about facebook. It is a really questionable practice. That said, I would
rather use this page than DDG, as long as I don't get lies about privacy
stuffed in my face.

~~~
chris_f
I call that a Quick Direct. It's not for everyone, and you can disable that
feature under the advanced search options.

Surprisingly (to me at least) that is the feature that resonates the most with
non-technical users. A lot of people use Google just as a navigational tool to
go to a website they know about. This saves them a step for some highly
popular websites, but your point is still well taken.

~~~
aboringusername
It would be okay if I typed in facebook.com or faecbook.com, sure. But not
allowing me to see the index for "facebook" is really not what I expect from a
search engine. What if I want to type "facebook" and see general information,
or news? I can't as your search redirects me away.

Maybe offer a card: "Do you want to visit Facebook?" would suit the best of
both worlds. Or, if you must, a 10-second auto redirect.

Anything but going straight to FB.

~~~
hundchenkatze
How often do you search for just "facebook" (or any other site) without any
other qualifiers and expect to get information or news? If you search for
"facebook" on Google all of the results above the fold just go to facebook.com
page anyway. If you want info about the most recent facebook scandal you'll
likely get better results from any search engine if you add more search terms
e.g. "facebook scandal"

~~~
Kuinox
I never search for website I already want to, when I type it, the URL show up
and I use it.

------
javitury
Runnaroo has become my default search engine since a couple of months.

1\. Search results are more relevant. In comparison to google. I noticed a
reduction in spammy results like slant, fake blogs, gitmemory, etc. There is
still room for improvement.

2\. Claims to respect users' privacy

3\. Languages other than English are handled fine. In this regard runnaroo is
usable for everyday searches, unlike DDG. Queries in a foreign language
produce results of the same or lower quality than those from google.

I know the author is reading this, so here is some feedback.

\- Make the search engine available for firefox mobile. I know there is an
extension but it can't be installed on phones.

\- Improve the behavior of the search box in mobile phones.

\- Keep on fighting spammy results

~~~
nickexyz
I just realized today that you can long-press the search field to add the
search engine in Firefox for Android.

Not really that obvious, but there are instructions in Settings->Search.

------
simpsond
Nice work! One bug/feature I noticed: Once focused on the image tab, if I
revise my search, the image tab loses focus and the primary search results tab
gains focus. It wasn’t the expected behavior for me.

------
RobLach
I wish the about page had some information about the people who built this
because I feel trust is increasingly important in my rubric for choosing what
services I use.

------
colesantiago
Is Runnaroo open source? I cannot find the source code?

------
ibdf
I've been using it since this was posted here. I am ok with the search
results, given the privacy I get back.. I do miss the google cards though...
type EPL get all results for the Premiere League... type NBA get all games
coming up... type movies and see what's coming out near me.

------
jtolds
this reminds me of dogpile
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogpile)

is everything old new again? have we hit some sort of cyclic point in internet
search quality where we need this once more? dogpile was ended when pagerank
showed up.

~~~
markstos
Agreed. Meta-searchers have been tried many times. It's not clear how this
will succeed where those failed.

------
nickx720
I love it. Please consider dark mode :)

------
gremlinsinc
I wanted so hard to love DDG, but it failed so hard esp for developer
questions (90% of my searches).... but DAMN this is what I wanted in a
replacement. I've already replaced google, though native dark mode would be
cool, but I can just use stylish for that ;)

------
exabrial
All I want from a search engine to the ability to search for an exact phrase
once in awhile...

------
fireattack
Why does it use
"[https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid="](https://en.wikipedia.org/?curid=") style
URL for general information from Wikipedia? Doesn't seem very convenient.

------
sourcex
Why did you name it Runnaroo? Search engine are supposed to be easy to spell
and type. During the last 3 days of my usage, I misspelt Runnaroo every 3rd
time I opened it.

------
jmakov
Howto "Show HN": post a project, ignore all best (technical) practices
discussed on HN, update your site to "Unfortunately, we are temporarily taking
the site down..."

------
ianwalter
Looks good and I'm going to try it as my default search engine for a bit.
There are a handful of small UI issues that make me wish it were open source
so I could fix them.

------
ttul
It’s easy to make a decent small search engine: nobody is working to game your
algorithm. Vastly harder to do this as you scale to google size and
popularity.

~~~
mgreg
That's a great argument for a more diverse set of search competitors,
especially with their own index. Imagine if we had 10 viable search engines
rather than just the 1 (or 1.5) we currently have. With multiple ranking
algorithms a SEO-bait site would work on one or two but unlikely on all 10.

~~~
ttul
I think competition is awesome. Just don’t underestimate how steep the
learning curve is once you become a little bit popular.

------
benbristow
Search seems to be down due to the HN hug of death (as stated on the landing
page). Looking forward to giving this a bash whenever it comes back up again.

------
gavribirnbaum
why is it that all search engines still look like Google in the 90's. Can't
the UI become fresher?

also I think SEO really ruined the search experience. do you have plans to use
other ranking factors? Maybe social upvoting or so to improve ranking of
actual good content as opposed to crappy listicles which is 50% of search
results right now?

------
totaldude87
i like the way it orders the search results and not listing meaningless more
pages of results.

One thing i found while searching images is that, i cant start a new image
search , because it brings me back to the "all" tab.

ex: search harry potter

go to images , now i wanted to search for hermione images alone, but it takes
me all back to full web results.

------
davidajackson
That's cool that if you search youtube it takes you right to youtube. Google
doesn't do that.

------
carlsborg
Hey this is good. Great work!

------
lord-squirrel
What is your technology stack and how do you plan to scale it in the future?

------
nerflad
I appreciate how in image searches, you appear to be filtering dupes.

------
didip
hohoho, wow. Tried quite a few searches and the results are very relevant.
This is great.

If this is just piggybacking on Google API, can the business survive?

Another question is... how will you make money?

------
muhammadusman
what's the business model supporting this?

------
whycombagator
> Unfortunately, we are temporarily taking the site down while we perform some
> updates. Apologies to our existing users. We are working to get back up to
> be better than before.

Nice

------
gverrilla
google is most certainly broken it's a catalog, not a search engine will give
runnaroo a few tries! gl thanks

------
matchbok
I mean, this just uses the Google API. So, nothing new here. Your entire
business relies on them.

~~~
Kiro
All alternative search engines rely on either Google or Bing.

------
6510
very nice, ill be using this from now on. Thanks!

