There are public instances, or you can self-host it.
Its a “meta search engine”, meaning that it aggregates, and reorganizes results from the indexes of whichever search engines you want (after removing AI, Ads, and sponsored content from those results).
You could set it to index only Google if you wanted, and you’d basically have pre-enshitified google. I have about 20 indexes active in my personal instance, but they have ~100 indexes that you can use, allowing you to see results that wouldn’t turn up on Google or DDG.
It’s free, and it works better than Google ever has.
I had been searching for a specific rare game ROM for literally years, to no avail. I ran one SearXNG querry, and found the ROM from the 2nd link on page 1 (that’s right, pages, none of this infinite scroll rigmarole).
SearXNG
There are public instances, or you can self-host it.
Its a “meta search engine”, meaning that it aggregates, and reorganizes results from the indexes of whichever search engines you want (after removing AI, Ads, and sponsored content from those results).
You could set it to index only Google if you wanted, and you’d basically have pre-enshitified google. I have about 20 indexes active in my personal instance, but they have ~100 indexes that you can use, allowing you to see results that wouldn’t turn up on Google or DDG.
It’s free, and it works better than Google ever has.
I had been searching for a specific rare game ROM for literally years, to no avail. I ran one SearXNG querry, and found the ROM from the 2nd link on page 1 (that’s right, pages, none of this infinite scroll rigmarole).
I would be interesting in learning to set this up. I’m not super familiar with self hosting tho. Do you have a guide you’d recommend?
Not off the top of my uead, but i could probably find one.
What OS do you use?
I have mint and Windows.
Ok cool, I set mine up on Mint and it was super easy
Are you familiar with Docker? (If not it’s cool, it’s very easy to learn)
I am familiar with docker
Awesome, then you already have all of the knowledge you’ll need to stand up your own private instance (and troubleshoot if needed)!
https://docs.searxng.org/admin/installation-searxng.html#installation-basic
Let me know how it goes
Thanks for this. I’ll get back to you when I get a chance to try this.