
Searx instances - troydavis
https://searx.space/
======
troydavis
To add a searx instance to your browser's search engines, visit the instance
and follow the instructions on
[https://searx.xyz/about](https://searx.xyz/about) ("How to set as the default
search engine?").

For example, to add the instance searx.xyz to Firefox, visit
[https://searx.xyz/](https://searx.xyz/) , click on the "..." icon to the
right of the URL bar, and click "Add Search Engine." You can then choose searx
while typing a query or can make it your default search engine (see
about:preferences#search).

~~~
abc-xyz
How do websites get the “Add Search Engine” button? For instance, I noticed I
can do it with Gandi but not with Name or Namecheap.

~~~
troydavis
They publish a small “OpenSearch description file” XML document somewhere on
the domain, then put the path to that file in an HTML meta tag (which enables
browser auto-discovery). Here’s more: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/OpenSearch](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/OpenSearch)

~~~
abc-xyz
Very interesting, thanks :)

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haddr
Doesn’t it violate google search terms? If I setup it locally, would I have to
solve captchas all the time afterwards?

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dnpp123
I tried to use searx for a while, but gave up due to the lack of decent
instance.

Ended up using startpage.com - it might be a tad worst for privacy but a lot
better for usability IMHO. If anyone is aware of a better alternative, I'd
love to know about it.

~~~
cringepirate
I've setup my own instance on a VPS of searx (along with git, blog, private
npm and a few other bits and pieces). It isn't particularly hard if you've
setup an website on a Linux box before.

~~~
dnpp123
If you set up your own instance and are the only one to use it, what's the
point of using searx and not grogle directly?

~~~
cringepirate
Because my goal is to move everything to self hosting whenever possible. Also
there is nothing stopping anyone else from using it.

~~~
dnpp123
Right, the way I see it, searx model is flawed.

I want to host my personal instance. But doing so doesn't make any sense since
if I'm alone using it. So I'm better off using Google directly, unless someone
can search whatever he wants via a service I'm hosting :/

~~~
cringepirate
Well if you use google directly, google can track what you are doing. However
if you use your own searx instance that is very difficult. I also host my
instance publicly (I've not added to the list because I am using the cheapest
VPS from vultr) and for some things I get better results than Google,
DuckDuckGo etc.

So as with many things it is swings and roundabouts and is determined on what
you want to do. I wouldn't call the model flawed, it just seems that the
benefits of it aren't what you want. Which is fine.

~~~
dnpp123
> However if you use your own searx instance that is very difficult

The whole point of searx is not to mix your google research with other people
google research, hence making it harder to track you?

AFAIK being alone in using a searx instance is useless, as google will still
track you via this searx instance.

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Lammy
Are there any good FOSS projects that would let me run my own crawler?

~~~
tobias2014
YaCy is the only one I'm aware of. See
[https://www.yacy.net/demonstration_tutorial_screenshot/](https://www.yacy.net/demonstration_tutorial_screenshot/)

~~~
surround
YaCy is a decentralized search engine

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vstuart
I wrote a short quide on installing searX on a Linux system back in Feb. 2020

Non-Docker Local Installation of searX on Linux:
[https://persagen.com/2020/02/02/searx.html](https://persagen.com/2020/02/02/searx.html)

I use it routinely as my default search interface to the web, defaulting
rarely e.g. to Google for image seaches.

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asdflke
I love the idea of searx. And ran a searx instance for a bit. Overall good
idea. Slow search execution.

~~~
henriquemaia
Searx is only as slow as your configuration allows it. You have to check the
preferences, under engines, and deselect the offending slower engines. Some
will take up to 10s to return any result. If you only choose faster engines,
searx will also be faster.

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romanr
Is there any explanation what is this?

~~~
Lammy
It's a search engine that searches other search engines for you with a focus
on privacy (e.g. provides direct links to results instead of Google-style
tracking links, etc):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Searx)

