mirror of
https://git.sr.ht/~seirdy/seirdy.one
synced 2024-09-19 20:02:10 +00:00
Add gemtext version
This commit is contained in:
Rohan Kumar
parent
de8c4f1f28
commit
db25b73460
1 changed files with 199 additions and 0 deletions
|
|
@ -0,0 +1,199 @@
|
|||
DRAFT POST: this post is in progress/under review on envs.net and will be posted on my main site, seirdy.one when it’s ready. Don’t share it yet.
|
||||
|
||||
=> gemini://seirdy.one/ seirdy.one
|
||||
|
||||
This is a cursory review of all the indexing search engines I have been able to find.
|
||||
|
||||
The three dominant English search engines with their own indexes¹ are Google, Bing, and Yandex (GBY). Many alternatives to GBY exist, but almost none of them have their own results; instead, they just source their results from GBY.
|
||||
|
||||
With that in mind, I decided to test and catalog all the different indexing search engines I could find. I prioritized breadth over depth, and encourage readers to try the engines out themselves if they’d like more information.
|
||||
|
||||
I primarily evaluated English-speaking search engines because that’s my primary language. With some difficulty, I could probably evaluate a Spanish one; however, I wasn’t able to find any Spanish-language engines powered by their own crawlers.
|
||||
|
||||
This page is a “living document” that I plan on updating indefinitely. Check for updates once in a while if you find this page interesting. Feel free to send me suggestions, updates, and corrections; I’d especially appreciate help from those who speak languages besides English and can evaluate a non-English indexing search engine. Contact info is in the article footer.
|
||||
|
||||
## Methodology
|
||||
|
||||
I mainly evaluated link results, and didn’t focus too much on (often glaring) privacy issues, “enhanced” or “instant” results (e.g. Wikipedia sidebars, related searches, StackExchange answers), or other elements.
|
||||
|
||||
I compared results for esoteric queries side-by-side; if the first 20 results were (nearly) identical to another engine’s results (though perhaps in a slightly different order), they were likely sourced externally and not from an independent index.
|
||||
|
||||
I tried to pick queries that should have a good number of results and show variance between search engines. An incomplete selection of queries I tested:
|
||||
|
||||
* “vim”, “emacs”, “neovim”, and “nvimrc”: Search engines with relevant results for “nvimrc” typically have a big index. Finding relevant results for the text editors “vim” and “emacs” instead of other topics that share the name is a challenging task.
|
||||
* “vim cleaner”: should return results related to a line of cleaning products rather than the Correct Text Editor.
|
||||
* “Seirdy”: My site is relatively low-traffic, but my nickname is pretty unique and visible on several of the highest-traffic sites out there.
|
||||
* “Project London”: a small movie made with volunteers and FLOSS without much advertising. If links related to the movie show up, the engine’s really good.
|
||||
* “oppenheimer”: a name that could refer to many things. Without context, it should refer to the physicist who worked on the atomic bomb in Los Alamos. Other historical queries: “magna carta” (intermediate), “the prince” (very hard).
|
||||
|
||||
## General indexing search-engines
|
||||
|
||||
### Large indexes, good results
|
||||
|
||||
These are large engines that pass all the above tests and more.
|
||||
|
||||
1. Google: the biggest index. Allows submitting pages and sitemaps for crawling, but requires login. Powers a few other engines:
|
||||
|
||||
* Startpage
|
||||
* Runaroo
|
||||
* SAPO (Portuguese interface, can work with English results)
|
||||
|
||||
2. Bing: the runner-up. Allows submitting pages and sitemaps for crawling, but requires login. Its index powers many other engines:
|
||||
|
||||
* Yahoo
|
||||
* DuckDuckGo²
|
||||
* AOL
|
||||
* Qwant³
|
||||
* Ecosia
|
||||
* Ekoru
|
||||
* Privado
|
||||
* Findx
|
||||
* Disconnect Search⁴
|
||||
* PrivacyWall
|
||||
* Lilo
|
||||
* SearchScene
|
||||
* Peekier
|
||||
* Oscobo
|
||||
* Million Short
|
||||
* Yippy search⁵
|
||||
* Lycos
|
||||
* Givero
|
||||
* Swisscows
|
||||
* Ask.moe⁶
|
||||
* Partially powers MetaGer by default; this can be turned off
|
||||
* At this point, I stopped adding Bing-based search engines. There are just too many.
|
||||
|
||||
3. Yandex: originally a Russian search engine, it now has an English version. Some Russian results bleed into its English site. Allows submitting pages and sitemaps for crawling, but requires login. Powers:
|
||||
|
||||
* Epic Search
|
||||
* Occasionally powers DuckDuckGo’s link results instead of Bing.
|
||||
|
||||
4. Mojeek: Claims to be privacy-oriented. Quality isn’t at Google/Bing/Yandex’s level, but it’s not bad either. If I had to use Mojeek as my default general search engine, I’d live.
|
||||
5. Petal search: gopetal.com and petalsearch.com. A very new engine developed by Huawei. Surprisingly good results; it passed all the listed tests. Requires an account to submit sites. I discovered this via my access logs.
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://www.gopetal.com/ gopetal.com
|
||||
=> https://petalsearch.com/ petalsearch.com
|
||||
|
||||
### Smaller indexes, relevant results
|
||||
|
||||
These engines pass most of the tests listed in the “methodology” section.
|
||||
|
||||
* Right Dao : very fast, good results. Passes the tests fairly well.
|
||||
* Gigablast : It’s been around for a while and also sports a classic web directory. Searches are a bit slow, and it charges to submit sites for crawling. It powers Private.sh. Gigablast is tied with Right Dao for quality.
|
||||
* Gowiki : Very young, small index, but shows promise. I discovered this in the seirdy.one access logs.
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://rightdao.com Right Dao
|
||||
=> http://gigablast.com/ Gigablast
|
||||
=> https://private.sh Private.sh
|
||||
=> https://gowiki.com Gowiki
|
||||
|
||||
### Smaller indexes, hit-and-miss
|
||||
|
||||
These engines fail badly at a few important tests.
|
||||
|
||||
* seekport : The interface is in German but it supports searching in English just fine. The default language is selected by your locale. It’s really good considering its small index; it hasn’t heard of less common terms (e.g. “Seirdy”), but it’s able to find relevant results in other tests.
|
||||
* Exalead : 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 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.
|
||||
* wbsrch : In addition to its generalist search, it also has many other utilities related to domain name statistics. Failed multiple tests. Its index is a bit dated; it has an old backlog of sites it hasn’t finished indexing.
|
||||
* ExactSeek : 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 SEO options.
|
||||
|
||||
=> http://www.seekport.com/ seekport
|
||||
=> http://www.exalead.com/search/ Exalead
|
||||
=> https://curlie.org Curlie
|
||||
=> https://wbsrch.com/ wbsrch
|
||||
=> https://www.exactseek.com/ ExactSeek
|
||||
|
||||
### Unusable engines, irrelevant results
|
||||
|
||||
Results from these search engines don’t seem at all useful.
|
||||
|
||||
* YaCy: community-made index; slow. Results are awful/irrelevant, but can be useful for intranet or custom search.
|
||||
* Scopia: only seems to be available via the MetaGer metasearch engine after turning off Bing and news results. Tiny index, very low-quality.
|
||||
* Active Search Results : very poor quality
|
||||
* Crawlson: young, slow. In this category because its index has a cap of 10 urls per domain. I initially discovered Crawlson in the seirdy.one access logs. The site seems to be down right now, so I didn’t link it.
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://metager.org MetaGer
|
||||
=> https://www.activesearchresults.com Active Search Results
|
||||
|
||||
## Non-generalist search
|
||||
|
||||
These indexing search engines don’t have a Google-like “ask me anything” endgame; they’re trying to do something different.
|
||||
|
||||
* Wiby: I love this one. It focuses on smaller independent sites that capture the spirit of the “early” web. It’s more focused on “discovering” new interesting pages that match a set of keywords than finding a specific resources. I like to think of Wiby as an engine for surfing, not searching. Runaroo occasionally features a hit from Wiby. If you have a small site or blog that isn’t very “commercial”, consider submitting it to the index.
|
||||
* Quor: seems to mainly index large news sites.
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://wiby.me wiby.me
|
||||
=> https://wiby.org wiby.org
|
||||
=> https://www.quor.com Quor
|
||||
|
||||
## Other languages
|
||||
|
||||
I’m unable to evaluate these engines properly since I don’t speak the necessary languages. English searches on these are a hit-or-miss. I might have made a few mistakes in this category.
|
||||
|
||||
### Big indexes
|
||||
|
||||
* Baidu: Chinese
|
||||
* Qihoo 360: Chinese. I’m not sure how independent this one is.
|
||||
* Sogou: Chinese
|
||||
* Yisou: Chinese
|
||||
* Naver: Korean.
|
||||
* Seznam: Czech, seems relatively privacy-friendly. Discovered in the seirdy.one access logs.
|
||||
* Cốc Cốc: Vietnamese
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://search.naver.com Naver
|
||||
=> https://www.seznam.cz/ Seznam
|
||||
=> https://coccoc.com/search Cốc Cốc
|
||||
|
||||
### Smaller indexes
|
||||
|
||||
* Parsijoo: Persian
|
||||
* search.ch: Regional search engine for Switzerland; users can restrict searches to their local regions.
|
||||
* fastbot: German
|
||||
* Moose.at: German (Austria-based)
|
||||
|
||||
=> http://www.parsijoo.ir/ Parsijoo
|
||||
=> https://search.ch search.ch
|
||||
=> https://www.fastbot.de/ fastbot
|
||||
=> https://www.moose.at Moose.at
|
||||
|
||||
## Misc
|
||||
|
||||
* Ask.com: the main site shut down, but subdomains like uk.ask.com are still alive. They claim to outsource search results. The results seem similar to Google, Bing, and Yandex; however, I can’t pinpoint exactly where their results are coming from.
|
||||
* Not evaluated: Apple’s search. It’s only accessible through a search widget in iOS and macOS and shows very few results. This might change; see the next section.
|
||||
* Partially evaluated: Infinity Search young, small index. It recently split into a paid offering with the main index and Infinity Decentralized, the latter of which allows users to select from community-hosted crawlers. I managed to try it out before it became a paid offering, and it seemed decent; however, I wasn’t able to run the tests listed in the “Methodology” section. Allows submitting URLs and sitemaps into a text box, no other work required.
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://uk.ask.com uk.ask.com
|
||||
=> https://infinitysearch.co Infinity Search
|
||||
=> https://infinitydecentralized.com/ Infinity Decentralized
|
||||
|
||||
## Upcoming engines
|
||||
|
||||
These engines aren’t ready yet; their indexes are either in a proof-of-concept phase with a handful of sites, or aren’t available yet.
|
||||
|
||||
* Apple: given the activity of the AppleBot crawler lately, their index will almost certainly grow to a size large enough to power a general search engine soon. Check your server’s access logs; there’s a good chance it’s crawled your site if you have a few backlinks.
|
||||
* Brave announced that it will start its own independent search engine based on the now-discontinued Cliqz. I don’t endorse the company, but I hope its results will be available through metasearch engines like Searx.
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://brave.com/search/ Brave Search
|
||||
|
||||
## Acknowledgements
|
||||
|
||||
Some of this content came from the Search Engine Map and Search Engine Party. A few web directories also proved useful.
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://www.searchenginemap.com/ Search Engine Map
|
||||
=> https://searchengine.party/ Search Engine Party
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
## Notes
|
||||
|
||||
¹ Yes, “indexes” is an acceptable plural form of the word “index”. The word “indices” sounds weird to me outside a math class.
|
||||
|
||||
² DuckDuckGo has a crawler called DuckDuckBot. This crawler doesn’t impact the linked results displayed; it just grabs favicons and scrapes data for a few instant answers
|
||||
|
||||
³ Qwant claims to also use its own crawler for results, but it’s still mostly Bing. Try a side-by-side comparison; I found that it doesn’t seem to have anything besides Bing results.
|
||||
|
||||
⁴ Disconnect Search allows users to have results proxied from Bing or Yahoo, but Yahoo sources its results from Bing.
|
||||
|
||||
⁵ Yippy claims to be powered by a certain IBM brand (a brand that could correspond to any number of products) and annotates results with the phrase “Yippy Index”, but a side-by-side comparison with Bing and other Bing-based engines revealed results to be nearly identical.
|
||||
|
||||
⁶ Ask.moe was working on a FLOSS indexer; its search page stated an intention to switch to it from Bing at one point. This statement has since been removed.
|
||||
|
||||
=> https://git.sr.ht/~danskeren/spider.moe FLOSS indexer
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in a new issue