I’m looking into self-hosting a SearXNG instance for my own use. One thing I don’t get is how the results are aggregated if I’m using a local instance. Is it just going to all the configured search engines and making requests? If that’s the case, what’s the benefit of using SearXNG instead of just going to that search engine myself from a privacy perspective?
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Yes, searxng is indeed making requests to all configured search engines.
The intended use of searxng is to proxy searches for many users, making tracking individuals difficult for the search engines, since everyone’s data is mixed together.
Using searxng does however also bring some benefits if used by one person only:
- no browser fingerprinting
- convenience: get results from across many search engines at once
I personally use a private instance mostly because I like the simple search results page.
From Wikipedia:
SearXNG removes private data from requests sent to search services. Result pages do not include advertisements or referral links. SearXNG itself stores little to no information that can be used to identify users.
The thing with SearXNG is that it will search in multiple search engines in parallel and then aggregate the results. If the same result appears in all of the queries, it’ll be weighted more than one that appears in only one of the results.
This way you get very neutral overall results compared to the biased ones Google usually delivers.
Also, you can easily define custom search engines, so you could make it search on your favourite website as well.
yeah, I’m well aware of these features. Just didn’t get the benefit of running a private instance vs. using a trusted public instance, which would hide my IP from the search engines.
Configure the TOR Duckduckgo and Brave search engines and only search over TOR. Switch circuits every x hours.
that’s gonna make it very slow tho…
You never know when this public instance is going away and don’t have a say in additional custom search engines.
I run this on a Raspberry Pi at home. My ISP bumps me to a different IP address every few days. So no worries there for me.
Self-host more Gemini content!
You can run your searxng on a VPS, and then it’ll hide your IP address.
In most cloud provides you can also change your machine’s IP address so there’s also that.
I suggest using Whoogle.
I’m really on the last page with Whoogle.
It’s a great app, been using it for privacy a long time now. All creds to the developers.
But as Google Search continues to get worse and has been for a while now, I’m going to start to selfhost Searx instead. I’m currently using a public instance.
Truth to be told, I think all search engines are getting worse. But with Searx at least you have more sources in one app.
Definitely all search engines are getting worse. They all use one algorithm or another to find results, and advertisers are quick to obtain that algorithm and exploit it.
