Looking at new search engines
I'm always on the lookout for new ways of finding information. The current status quo of Google/Bing, or DuckDuckGo if your privacy minded, feel inadequate.
I happened across a small number of lesser known search engines and decided to try them out. I'm excluding any that didn't work.
Mojeek
Mojeek was the most impressive one I found so far. It's not always able to find what I'm looking for, but it finds the most unique results.
It's quite strong at filtering out the same stuff we've seen regurgitated around the web. Searches with Mojeek feel easier to find genuine content made by real people.
It's the only private search engine I've seen that's actually building their own unique search index, instead of relying on the bigger companies.
As a plus, the site doesn't require Javascript to function.
I haven't seen any leaks of personal information like DDG does with it's random inclusion of apartments in my area for no reason.
I'll keep this one around for when I want to find things I haven't seen before.
Marginalia Search
A search engine that focuses on showing non-commercial content. Helpful for finding pages made by real people.
Not intended as a general purpose search engine, but is great as a supplemental tool.
private.sh
An attempt to innovate on the search engine. They claim to have a more secure way of searching by encrypting your search in a way that prevents the search engine from being able to link your IP to the searches.
https://private.sh/how-it-works.html
I don't currently have a way to verify their claims, but if it's true, more search engines should consider adopting such policies.
It takes a lot more finessing to get decent search results. Search times are a lot slower, which was expected with the encryption process.
Science.gov
Science.gov is a specialized search engine for U.S. scientific research. Eases the process of searching through open access studies. Use this instead of Google Scholar.
Wiby
"A search engine for the old web". A specialty search engine that's somewhat manually indexed to provide results for pages that are non-commercial and use simple HTML.
This is actually pretty awesome. I love seeing such personal passion websites. Reminds me of Neocities, but for the rest of the web. These are the kinds of results I wish still showed up on other search engines.
/gemlog/