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RIP Meorca, add info on 3p sources to Brave.

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Rohan Kumar 2022-03-01 14:42:59 -08:00
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6
content/posts/search-engines-with-own-indexes.gmi
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@ -103,14 +103,12 @@ These engines fail badly at a few important tests. Otherwise, they seem to work
=> https://www.exactseek.com/ ExactSeek
=> https://www.sengine.info/ sengine.info
* Meorca: A UK-based search engine that claims not to "index pornography or illegal content websites". It also features a public blog with a marketplace and free games. Allows submitting URLs, but requires a full name, email, phone number, and "business name" to do so. Discovered in the seirdy.one access logs.
* Infotiger: A small index that seems to find relevant results. It allows site submission for English and German pages. It also features a "similarity" search to query pages similar to a given link, with mixed results.
* Kozmonavt: Has a small index of almost 5 million sites. If I want to find the website for a certain project, Kozmonavt works well (provided its index has crawled said website). It works poorly for learning things and finding general information. I cannot recommend it for anything serious since it lacks contact information, a privacy policy, or any other information about the org/people who made it. Discovered in the seirdy.one access logs.
* Burf.co: Very small index, but seems fine at ranking more relevant results higher. Allows site submission without any extra steps.
* Entfer: a newcomer that lets registered users upvote/downvote search results to customize ranking. Doesn't offer much information on who made it. Its index is small, but it does seem to return results related to the query.
* Siik: Lacks contact info, and the ToS and Privacy Policy links are dead. Seems to have PHP errors in the backend for some of its instant-answer widgets. If you scroll past all that, it does have web results powered by what seems to be its own index. These results do tend to be somewhat relevant, but the index seems too small for more specific queries.
=> https://meorca.com/ Meorca Search Engine
=> https://alpha.infotiger.com/ Infotiger
=> https://kozmonavt.ml/ Kozmonavt
=> https://burf.co/ Burf.co
@ -151,7 +149,7 @@ Results from these search engines don’t seem at all useful.
Engines in this category fall back to GBY when their own indexes don't have enough results. As their own indexes grow, some claim that this should happen less often.
* Brave Search: Many tests (including all the tests I listed in the "Methodology" section) resulted results identical to Google, revealed by a side-by-side comparison with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled. Brave claims that this is due to how Cliqz (the discontinued engine acquired by Brave) used query logs to build its page models and was optimized to match Google.¹⁰ The index is independent, but optimizing against Google resulted in too much similarity for the real benefit of an independent index to show.
* Brave Search: Many tests (including all the tests I listed in the "Methodology" section) resulted results identical to Google, revealed by a side-by-side comparison with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled. Brave claims that this is due to how Cliqz (the discontinued engine acquired by Brave) used query logs to build its page models and was optimized to match Google.¹⁰ The index is independent, but optimizing against Google resulted in too much similarity for the real benefit of an independent index to show. Furthermore, many queries have Bing results mixed in; users can click an "info" button to see the percentage of results that came from its own index. The independent percentage is typically quite high (often close to 100%) but can drop for advanced queries.
=> https://search.brave.com/ Brave Search
@ -280,10 +278,12 @@ Time for my first Gemini-exclusive content! A Gemini page about search engines w
These engines were originally included in the article, but have since been discontinued.
* Meorca: A UK-based search engine that claimed not to "index pornography or illegal content websites". It also featured a public blog with a marketplace and free games. Allowed submitting URLs, but required a full name, email, phone number, and "business name" to do so. Discovered in the seirdy.one access logs. It seems to have dropped everything and pivoted to image-search, which is out of scope for this post.
* gus.guru: the original Gemini search engine. The index doesn't seem to be updated anymore.
* wbsrch: In addition to its generalist search, it also had many other utilities related to domain name statistics. Failed multiple tests. Its index was a bit dated; it had an old backlog of sites it hadn’t finished indexing. It also had several dedicated per-language indexes.
* Gowiki: Very young, small index, but showed promise. I discovered this in the seirdy.one access logs. It was only available in the US. Seems down as of early 2022.
=> https://meorca.com/ Meorca Search Engine
=> gemini://gus.guru/ gus.guru
=> https://xangis.com/the-wbsrch-experiment/ The Wbsrch Experiment
=> https://gowiki.com Gowiki

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content/posts/search-engines-with-own-indexes.md
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@ -94,7 +94,6 @@ These engines fail badly at a few important tests. Otherwise, they seem to work
- [Exalead](https://www.exalead.com/search/): slow, quality is hit-and-miss. Its indexer claims to crawl the DMOZ directory, which has since shut down and been replaced by the [Curlie](https://curlie.org) directory. No relevant results for "Oppenheimer" and some other history-related queries. Allows submitting individual URLs for indexing, but requires solving a Google reCAPTCHA and entering an email address.
- [ExactSeek](https://www.exactseek.com/): small index, disproportionately dominated by big sites. Failed multiple tests. Allows submitting individual URLs for crawling, but requires entering an email address and receiving a newsletter. Webmaster tools seem to heavily push for paid <abbr title="search-engine optimization">SEO</abbr> options. It also powers SitesOnDisplay and [Blog-search.com](https://blog-search.com).
- [sengine.info](https://www.sengine.info/): only shows domains, not individual pages. Developed by netEstate GmbH, which specializes in content extraction for inprints and job ads. Also has a German-only version available.
- [Meorca](https://meorca.com/): a search engine that claims not to "index pornography or illegal content websites". It also features a public blog with a marketplace and free games. Allows submitting URLs, but requires a full name, email, phone number, and "business name" to do so. Discovered in the seirdy.one access logs.
- [Infotiger](https://alpha.infotiger.com/): A small index that seems to find relevant results. It allows site submission for English and German pages. It also features a "similarity" search to query pages similar to a given link, with mixed results.
- [Kozmonavt](https://kozmonavt.ml/): Has a small index of almost 5 million sites. If I want to find the website for a certain project, Kozmonavt works well (provided its index has crawled said website). It works poorly for learning things and finding general information. I cannot recommend it for anything serious since it lacks contact information, a privacy policy, or any other information about the org/people who made it. Discovered in the seirdy.one access logs.
- [Burf.co](https://burf.co/): Very small index, but seems fine at ranking more relevant results higher. Allows site submission without any extra steps.
@ -119,7 +118,7 @@ Results from these search engines don't seem at all useful.
Engines in this category fall back to GBY when their own indexes don't have enough results. As their own indexes grow, some claim that this should happen less often.
- [Brave Search](https://search.brave.com/): Many tests (including all the tests I listed in the "Methodology" section) resulted results identical to Google, revealed by a side-by-side comparison with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled. Brave claims that this is due to how Cliqz (the discontinued engine acquired by Brave) used query logs to build its page models and was optimized to match Google.[^9] The index is independent, but optimizing against Google resulted in too much similarity for the real benefit of an independent index to show.
- [Brave Search](https://search.brave.com/): Many tests (including all the tests I listed in the "Methodology" section) resulted results identical to Google, revealed by a side-by-side comparison with Google, Startpage, and a Searx instance with only Google enabled. Brave claims that this is due to how Cliqz (the discontinued engine acquired by Brave) used query logs to build its page models and was optimized to match Google.[^9] The index is independent, but optimizing against Google resulted in too much similarity for the real benefit of an independent index to show. Furthermore, many queries have Bing results mixed in; users can click an "info" button to see the percentage of results that came from its own index. The independent percentage is typically quite high (often close to 100% independent) but can drop for advanced queries.
- [Plumb](https://plumb.one/): Almost all queries return no results; when this happens, it falls back to Google. It's fairly transparent about the fallback process, but I'm concerned about _how_ it does this: it loads Google's Custom Search scripts from `cse.google.com` onto the page to do a client-side Google search. This can be mitigated by using a browser addon to block `cse.google.com` from loading any scripts. Plumb claims that this is a temporary measure while its index grows, and they're planning on getting rid of this. Allows submitting URLs, but requires solving an hCaptcha. This engine is very new; hopefully as it improves, it could graduate from this section. Its Chief Product Officer [previously founded](https://archive.is/oVAre) the Gibiru search engine which shares the same affiliates and (for now) the same index; the indexes will diverge with time.
- [Neeva](https://neeva.com): Combines Bing results with results from its own index. Bing normally isn't okay with this, but Neeva is one of few exceptions. As of right now, results are mostly identical to Bing but original links not found by Bing frequently pop up. Long and esoteric queries are less likely to feature original results. Requires signing up with an email address or OAuth to use, and offers a paid tier with additional benefits.
- [Qwant](https://www.qwant.com): Qwant claims to use its own index, but it still relies on Bing for most results. It seems to be in a position similar to Neeva. Try a side-by-side comparison to see if or how it compares with Bing.
@ -195,6 +194,7 @@ Graveyard
These engines were originally included in the article, but have since been discontinued.
- [Meorca](https://meorca.com/): A UK-based search engine that claimed not to "index pornography or illegal content websites". It also featured a public blog with a marketplace and free games. Allowed submitting URLs, but required a full name, email, phone number, and "business name" to do so. Discovered in the seirdy.one access logs. It seems to have dropped everything and pivoted to image-search, which is out of scope for this post.
- [wbsrch](https://wbsrch.com/): In addition to its generalist search, it also had many other utilities related to domain name statistics. Failed multiple tests. Its index was a bit dated; it had an old backlog of sites it hadn't finished indexing. It also had several dedicated per-language indexes.
- [Gowiki](https://gowiki.com): Very young, small index, but showed promise. I discovered this in the seirdy.one access logs. It was only available in the US. Seems down as of early 2022.