
Searx – A privacy-respecting, hackable metasearch engine - crxro
https://www.searx.me/
======
y7
Interesting project. I looked around a bit, and this is apparently a public
installation of the open source project searx:
[https://github.com/asciimoo/searx](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx)

It aggregates searches from other search engines. You can specify a specific
search engine to search with a !-shortcut, e.g. "!go your search query" to
just search Google.

More info:
[https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/](https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/)

Onion link for searx.me:
[http://ulrn6sryqaifefld.onion/](http://ulrn6sryqaifefld.onion/)

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nacs
I have been using [https://startpage.com](https://startpage.com) which also
bills itself as a "Truly private search engine". It uses Google for search
results but sends your queries without any associated IP/cookie info. They
also don't log your searches.

~~~
visarga
Me too, but I added a button (with TamperMonkey) to switch back to Google.
Some searches are not good enough on StartPage, but at least I don't default
to Gg any more.

~~~
skrowl
I do the same (sort of) with duck duck go. Just add "!g" to the beginning or
end of your search and you'll get actual Google.

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sheraz
Would the most truly price one be more like yacy [1]?

This has been a keen interest of mine the last few months, and I will be
releasing my own open source search engine which basically a collection of
linked docker containers (solr, scrapy, Django, workers).

Certainly the hard road ahead will be relevancy and broad crawling.

[1] - [http://yacy.net](http://yacy.net)

~~~
j_s
I assume you've heard of [http://commoncrawl.org/](http://commoncrawl.org/) \-
hope this helps!

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mordocai
Anyone know why i'd want to use this over duckduckgo? Is it more private or
something? Their about page doesn't seem to offer anything compelling over
duckduckgo.

~~~
epchong
Well, DDG is owned by Yahoo... Also, it is not open source completely. So you
cannot know if it is really tracking you or not.

~~~
adrusi
You can't know if a public installation of an open source project is actually
just running the code that you see either. Hosted open source projects have no
security benefits over proprietary services.

And duckduckgo is not owned by yahoo. It has partnerships with yahoo, bing and
yandex to use their search databases.

~~~
epchong
I agree with you. However, you can run your own instance of searx if you don't
trust anyone. In case of DDG you don't have this option.

I am not sure that partnership or ownership really changes anything. But I
hope I am wrong about it. :)

~~~
mintplant
> I am not sure that partnership or ownership really changes anything.

It changes everything. DDG is a Yahoo customer and, as adrusi wrote, sources
search data from them among other providers. Yahoo doesn't control DDG, its
privacy measures, data collection, or product direction as they would as a
parent company. The relationship is completely different.

I do agree with you about Searx having the optional self-hosting advantage.
DDG claim they won't track you, but there's really no way to be certain.

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jsvaughan
Ah, brings back memories of Metacrawler
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaCrawler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaCrawler)),
which was once, pre-Google, my first choice of search engine.

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aantix
I don't see the API limits posted anywhere? Any limits on the number of
requests?

And since they're aggregating from other search engines, won't they eventually
reach a point where they're running out of API requests?

~~~
jasonkostempski
If API keys are required how is this truly private? Either you get your own
keys and loose privacy or you use someone else's service which brings you
right back to what you get with any other search engine.

~~~
aantix
Fair point. This occurred to me as well after doing my initial post (follow up
below).

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davidy123
Nice, but in the current environment this will turn into another wack-a-mole
game since obviously Google &c don't want to be used this way.

Somewhat relatedly, I wonder when the right to digitally remember what the
browser has seen (and create one's own database and automation and share
synthesized results) will become a thing for individuals.

~~~
JadeNB
> Nice, but in the current environment this will turn into another wack-a-mole
> game since obviously Google &c don't want to be used this way.

I've wondered about this (specifically in the context of DDG and Bing, but
more generally). You say " _another_ wack-a-mole game" (emphasis mine), so I
guess that it's happened before, but I don't know of any occurrences. Has it
happened that search engines have blocked this sort of large-scale
aggregator/re-director type access?

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skrowl
There are so many metasearch engines now, has anyone considered created a
metasearch of the metasearch engines?

We need to go deeper.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I used to use Turbo search as the most meta- and all-encompassing search I
could get. Hit the major non-meta and meta engines _plus_ a ton of specialized
and obscure ones with ability to configure or filter all that. Long time ago.
I'm not even sure the one in this link is it as it's long gone.

[http://websearch.about.com/od/generalsearchengines/ss/Early-...](http://websearch.about.com/od/generalsearchengines/ss/Early-
Search-Engines-Where-Are-They-Now.htm)

Turns out Wikipedia has a nice list of search engines. Didn't realize there's
so many but not surprised given lower barrier-to-entry.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metasearch_engines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metasearch_engines)

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epchong
How easy it is to add new search engines? What if I want to add for example
internet archive search engine?

~~~
mintplant
Looks pretty straightforward - as an example, here's a provider for the Arch
Linux Wiki:

[https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/blob/master/searx/engines/...](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/blob/master/searx/engines/archlinux.py)

There's also a list of possible engines to support on their wiki:

[https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/possible-search-
engin...](https://github.com/asciimoo/searx/wiki/possible-search-engines)

The Internet Archive is on there - I'm sure they'd appreciate a pull request
adding it!

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slig
Since it scrapes Google, how does it manage to not get your server IP blocked?

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greglindahl
It doesn't. The idea is that you'll run your own personal instance, and
traffic will be low enough to not set off anyone's defenses. You'll see this
discussed if you look at the issues, and in the code you can see that it
supports using proxies and multiple IPs on hosts which have multiple IPs.

~~~
visarga
If you run your own, then it's not private any more. Your server IP will
identify your searches, and only your searches.

~~~
mintplant
Perhaps one could tunnel it through Tor, rotating identities regularly. There
is the issue of dealing with Google's aggressive reCAPTCHA challenges to
connections made through Tor, however.

~~~
ScroogeMcDoug
Historically, I've found Google search borderline impossible to use via Tor
because it'd usually give me an error page after solving the captcha.
Occasionally you'll find a window where they're not nulling Tor IPs, but it's
rarely worth the time.

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andy_ppp
>> Open result links on new browser tabs

This plugin requires Javascript apparently - surprised they can't use
target="_blank"?

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stma4i
Ever heard of usability and user experience? Using target="_blank" is strongly
discouraged since at least 2005. All links should normally open in the same
tab unless you use your browser options to open them in new tabs. You can
click on them with the middle button of your mouse or hold CTRL while you
click, for example.

~~~
andy_ppp
Sorry I wasn't clear - they have a plugin in the options that allows you to
open all the links in a SERP in a new window/tab - but it says under the
plugin that it requires javascript which seemed strange to me!

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derpenxyne
Inaccessible in Chrome 53.0.2785.21 dev-m (64-bit)

Unsupported protocol

The client and server don't support a common SSL protocol version or cipher
suite.

[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=searx.me](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=searx.me)

~~~
tetrep
Probably due to the fact that they only have DHE ciphersuites.

from Chrome's dev console:

    
    
          www.searx.me/:1 This site requires a DHE-based SSL cipher suite. These are deprecated and will be removed in M52, around July 2016. See https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5752033759985664 for more details.

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mombul
Some of you guys might be interested in Qwant
([https://www.qwant.com](https://www.qwant.com)) , a european "truly private"
search engine.

Disclaimer: I used to work there.

------
known
Similar to [http://www.metager.net/](http://www.metager.net/)

------
known
I like it; It'll be my default search engine;

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brunomvsouza
Lovely

