SearXNG: A New Metasearch Engine
March 4, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Internet browsers and search engines are two of the top applications used on computers. Search engine giants like Bing and Google don’t respect users’ privacy and they track everything. They create individual user profiles then sell and use the information for targeted ads. The search engines also demote controversial information and return biased search results. On his blog, FlareXes shares a solution that protects privacy and encompasses metasearch: “Build Your Own Private Search Engine With SearXNG.”
SearXNG is an open source, customizable metasearch engine that returns search results from multiple sources and respects privacy. It was originally built off another open source project SearX. SearXNG has an extremely functional user interface. It also aggregates information from over seventy search engines, including DuckDuckGo, Brave Search, Bing, and Google.
The best thing about SearXNG is protecting user privacy: But perhaps the best thing about SearXNG is its commitment to user privacy. Unlike some search engines, SearXNG doesn’t track users or generate personalized profiles, and it never shares any information with third parties.”
Because SearXNG is a metasearch engine, it supports organic search results. This allows users to review information that would otherwise go unnoticed. That doesn’t mean the returns will allegedly be unbiased. The idea is that SearXNG returns better results than a revenue juggernaut:
SearXNG aggregates data from different search engines that doesn’t mean this could be biased. There is no way for Google to create a profile about you if you’re using SearXNG. Instead, you get high-quality results like Google or Bing. SearXNG also randomizes the results so no SEO or top-ranking will not gonna work. You can also enable independent search engines like Brave Search, Mojeek etc.”
If you want a search engine that doesn’t collect your personal data and has betters search results, warrants a test drive. The installation may require some tech fiddling.
Whitney Grace, March 4, 2024
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