r/searchengines

Usually, I use Google but I don't like their automatic AI overview feature. I've searched online for alternatives like Ecosia, Startpage, Karma, No AI DDG, or what not, but they all seem to have some downfall or the other. Are there any search engines that are genuinely eco-friendly, don't use AI, have decently good search results, and have strong privacy? This sounds like a lot to ask for, even though I feel like these criteria should be normal... I would greatly appreciate any suggestions!

I've been thinking about customizability in search engines lately. Google has good results but is full of ads and tracking. Other engines like Startpage are private but have minimal customization options. Kagi is probably the only commercial search engine that has lots of customization features, "giving users control".

I'm curious how much people actually care about customizability in one. Customizability such as tweaking filters, shortcuts, result layouts, custom ranking, etc.

For me it's pretty high, maybe an 9 out of 10. Good results, speed, and privacy come first of course, but if I don't like a feature and can't remove it (cough... AI overviews) then its a dealbreaker for me.

How much do you care? 1-10 and why? What tweaks would make you switch? Ever left one because it was too locked down?

Appreciate any thoughts.

Hey everyone,I wanted to share a personal project I actually built the core of back in high school. I didn't have the money to host it publicly at the time, so I just ended up using it myself as my daily driver for the last two years. After testing it daily and refining the code, I finally got it online and want to share it with anyone looking for a clean, private alternative to mainstream engines. It features a dual-mode search architecture, an advanced proxy routing layout, a strict no-logging policy, and a system that requires zero user accounts to function across mobile, laptop, and tablet viewports. To maximize efficiency, it uses a pure algorithm mode optimized to be fast, alongside a machine learning mode that surfaces much higher accuracy.

The entire engine is built on an open-source algorithm, meaning the logic is completely public for anyone to audit or check the security. It also has built-in workflows to actively filter out low-quality SEO-farm websites from the top page so you get clean, reliable results. They also keep the platform human by dropping custom interactive UI themes during major events—the attached image and video demo shows off their live firework theme.

Here is the link to check it out:https://aoogle-production.up.railway.app/The source code repository is listed on the site if you want to dig into the routing logic or the privacy design!

https://preview.redd.it/9a7179cxv5bh1.png?width=1791&format=png&auto=webp&s=dfa3d2c36feac869630ed4bd32d856e52baf7034

Before I get into this yes I know that researching and looking things up is an important thing to know how to do blah blah blah I know that, and pardon any grammar errors, you're about to Read a very frustrated man's troubles with basic internet crap.

Like the title of the post says I hate when I have to research or look stuff up specifically because I never get what I am trying to look up or when I do get what I wanted I already spent like 30 minutes trying to adjust my search or going through multiple pages on Google,Reddit,YouTube, and even then it's not exactly what I want. I can look up something that should have a concrete answer, like the other day I was trying to look at whether or not I need a bubbler for my African dwarf frog tank since they breathe air and I have a filter that has decent water flow and half of the information was either contradictory wrong, or good old Google thinks I'm talking about fish specifically goldfish for some reason (like Google if I wanted to search up something about goldfish don't you fucking think I would put goldfish instead of African dwarf frog in my search?)

Or another thing like Minecraft I tried to look up old mining strategies for the game because I was playing older versions of it and yet I just kept getting modern strategies. Mind you I put the version edition, I put in the year, and I got videos that were just claiming that they had a bunch of that item or modern strategies that don't even work anymore.

Or this exact post? I tried looking up anything having to do with frustrations with trying to search things.

I looked up and I hate looking things up (granted I understand that word "looking" in that search pulled up what I didn't like but that's still bullshit)

and I get posts revolving around people feeling uncomfortable when people are looking at them. Does the term "looking things up" not exists to the Reddit search engine?

But what really sets me off is how frustrating searching anything having to deal with modding for video games there's so much bullshit I get the most misinformation, very outdated information from outdated videos or I just get the wrong thing I searched, I'll look up something like how to mod this game and I get as the top search result top 10 best mods to add to whatever game I put into the search bar.

And I know that the way search engines typically operate is that they look at what words you put in the search bar and they'll try to match any results to those words that you put in the search bar. But I remember it not pulling up things that had absolutely nothing to do with your search. At least until you go past the first page when it comes to Google. Now I'm pretty sure that I have to go multiple pages in to finally get what I want.

Like FUCKING HELL man, how do people do this as a JOB.

Edit:If this doesn't fit here I'm sorry but The original sub wouldn't let me put it in there

To be clear, this is not my website. It is a website I am considering using.

Hey everyone,

I need to vent a bit. I feel like this sub is the only place that will actually get where I'm coming from.

Lately I keep seeing everyone talking about moving to paid, subscription search engines. People are genuinely justifying paying 10 bucks a month just to get clean search results. Honestly, I think that's a bad road to go down. Information and searching the web should be free. We shouldn't have to choose between letting a massive corporation track our souls for ads, or paying a monthly fee just to look up a programming error or a recipe.

So for the past two years, I've been working on my own search engine to fix this.

I call it Aoogle. Short for anti Google.

I got tired of what the internet became. Google is just endless sponsored links, SEO spam, and those forced AI summaries that give you wrong answers anyway. I wanted something that felt like the old internet. Back when search engines just gave you links.

I developed this from scratch. It's fully lightweight and has its own ranking algorithm. The UI looks exactly like old school Google. There are no ads, and there is absolutely no AI summary stuff.

The code is 100% open source under the Apache 2.0 license. If you want, you can host the whole thing yourself on your own setup so you don't have to trust my servers.

I also know that completely switching search engines cold turkey is annoying.

So I built a sidebar extension for it too. It works on the major browsers. When you search for something on your regular browser, Aoogle pops up in a side panel next to your results. It lets you see clean links side by side without the mainstream junk blocking your view.

I attached some images and videos to this post so you can see the UI and how the sidebar actually functions.

I've been using this as my main daily driver for a while now and it changed how I use the web. I'm just one developer working on this, so I would love to get your honest feedback. I'll drop the links to the GitHub repository, my full architectural blog breakdown, and the temporary live web demo in the comments below so you guys can check it out.

So far, it looks as though the most frequently recommended engines are DuckDuckGo and some others that were apparently made(?) by random people or groups. Anyway, I guess some of the main things I'm curious about, ill list.

-What is a proxy when talking in terms of search engines?

-How can I tell when a search engine is a no-go or a green flag?

-Are some search engines more catered to certain pc's or does that not matter?

-What are some truly "good" search engines to consider?

Thank you in advance!

Any suggestions? I'm a researcher and need control of searches. I know options are limited. Even before AI, google was axing it's search operators and others seemed to follow suit or never had them. I'd like to block sites that return non-answers and filler. I would certainly pay for something that works, but can't host my own (and have found that self-hosted searches have limited crawlers anyway). I'm less worried about privacy, though that is certainly nice. Thank you!

Edit: seems like Kagi is coming out on top, for me. Explanation below.

Hello everyone!

I have been working on my own project called Synapic Search for 3 years(I’ve only been harvesting URL's for a year) already, and would like some feedback from those who are interested in search engines.

Synapic is a completely independent AI-powered search engine and knowledge discovery platform that does not use Google search infrastructure whatsoever. The platform consists of crawler, indexing, ranking engine, and AI reasoning.

Instead of competing as a general-purpose search engine for everyone, Synapic is targeted at developers, researchers, engineers, and power users who seek more deep information retrieval, context, and AI support.

Some of the technologies used:

* Independent web crawling and indexing

* Dynamic query intent classification

* 8-layer ranking engine – Noro-Fusion (Synapic Scor)

* Combination of semantic retrieval and traditional IR approaches

* Dynamic score weights computation based on Shannon Entropy

* GraphRAG routing for complicated queries

* Real-time knowledge graph generation

* Evidence-based AI answers

* Parallel LLM reranking

* Streaming answers through SSE

* Stateless Go backend with multi-level caching and several AI providers

The idea is definitely not to compete with Google. Instead, I try to find how an independent search engine should be built to meet the needs of technical users with combination of information retrieval, graph reasoning and modern AI.

To date, I have collected over 50 million web pages, over 10 million news articles and over 50 million images

I really appreciate any feedback on ranking architecture, GraphRAG implementation and design itself.

Website: https://synapicsearch.com

Hi all. I built https://puri.li, a fully self-hosted search engine with its own index / crawler. It currently has more than 20 million pages indexed and I added quite some tools (graph calculator, conversions, sunset/weather via openmeteo, etc). Please let me know what you think. BTW Any missing pages can be added via the add site form (takes ~30 minutes to be indexed).

duckduckgo vs startpage vs brave search which is the best overall alternative to google search

Usually when I search an address, the whole map shows up at the top of google - now I have to scroll all the way down to find it.

And even if I search for a hotel, the hotels website doesn’t even show at the top. So annoying!!

And all this AI crap is outrageous

..but I can't find it. does anyone know?

Occasionally, DDG’s search results return relevant search results. but the majority of the time, it returns completely useless results, often for something with a similar term, but with no ability to filter those out (including using “-“ before the wrong term (no space).

Is there some way to address this problem? I keep going over to Bing because DDG just doesn’t work.

Anyone out there use Metasoft Foundation Search? We are looking into it to supplement other services. It seems like it could be a really powerful tool based on the demo, but it also seems like it could be labor intensive.

Is it worth the cost? What have you found are the pros and cons?

(Bonus points if you work in government.)