Show HN: What do you think about my metasearch engine?

Is there a list of changes compared to searxng somewhere? I'd recommend adding something to the readme about the reason for forking the project as well. As far as I know, searxng is still maintained and accepting PRs?

Also, the readme says:

> In short, we just don't log nothing which means you don't really have anything to hide.

Double negatives like "don't log nothing" really bother me. You'd probably inspire more confidence simply changing it to "We don't log anything".

Love the oldschool eu.org domain but it seems to be just an instance of SearXNG at the moment.

It would be helpful if you were more explicit about what you've changed I think. Metasearch is an interesting area though.

My hunch is that search results pages aren't done well in any search engine right now. Many designs are too poisoned by looking at how Google is presenting the results.

I'm not sure how best to convey my feeling. Maybe pseudo-Socratically:

* What value does a search engine bring to its users? Does it help with navigating a vast library? Does it answer factual questions? Something else?

* In the light of the above, what is a good way of presenting search results?

It's a bit odd that all the search and "next page" requests are handled via POSTs. I like it when I can see the search query in the query args.

Also there's no progress or loading indicator on anything. When I click "Next Page" it looks like nothings happening for awhile. (though this is probably more of an issue now when I bet the site is under extra load).

Also I can't for the life of me figure out how to get anything but "General" search to work. Clicking IMAGES or VIDEO turns that label to bold, as if I can search for multiple types at once, but then doesn't update the results. Some text shows up telling me to click the magnifier, but if I click the magnifier in the top right that's actually a logo not a button (no visual distinction), so it takes me to the home page. When I go back, click IMAGES, and then click the magnifier to the right of the input field it still doesn't search for images. Normal behavior would be to search for the category I want as soon as I click it.

Also I wish the Next/Previous page button were links that showed the URL when I hovered, though now I'm just repeating my first request to use GET/query args.

edit: I now see, by inspecting the post requests, that after clicking/enabling types like "IMAGE" or "VIDEO", that the POST request trigger the search indicates those categories. Seems like the results don't change though. Also the search types I just made a search for become un-bolded when the results are returned meaning I'd have to re-enable them to make another search with the same types. (but pretty moot now since I assume this the other categories are unimplemented)

"Too many requests"

(In response to trying a test search.)

Give this metasearch engine an "A" rating for sense of humor.

Maybe it's not a great idea to call a frontend a "search engine" if the frontend operator does not also control the backends.

Huh, trying the search from a Brave browser doesn't give me any errors but from any other it does. I thought the SearXNG searches were done server side?

Hello everyone, author here.

Thank you for your constructive feedback you've left, honestly I did not believe this would skyrocket at all.

Since I do not have time right now I am unable to introduce all changes you've proposed, but be assured that I am reading them all when the time allows. Let me quote some feedback you posted:

> Double negatives like "don't log nothing" really bother me.

Double negatives in Polish are totally fine, however despite that this may sound a bit odd in English - will take that into consideration. Although I don't think that "we don't log nothing" sounds wrong, English isn't my mother tongue (I am from Poland) so I appreciate your comment on this.

> It's a bit odd that all the search and "next page" requests are handled via POSTs.

GET method is more prone to data (i.e. search) leakage. I know that POSTs aren't that convenient but there's no other choice for now. If I am wrong please correct me, I am not an expert but like to know the potential way of resolving this.

> Clicking IMAGES or VIDEO turns that label to bold, as if I can search for multiple types at once, but then doesn't update the results.

Fixed. Categories are implemented but because of an accidental error made by myself switching between categories wasn't possible. Sorry for the inconvenience this caused. Also you've mentioned that you can't switch instantly between categories. You may circumvent this by using flags (e.g. !images something for images tab), or by simply checking as much categories as you want then sending the request. Should you want explicitly this you may try to enable the "Search on category select" setting but unfortunately it doesn't work and when I've got more time I will try my best to fix it.

There are also some comments which pointed out the slowness of SVMetaSearch. Recently I've moved the project to a better VPS in the data centre located in Poland and most results should now show fine.

If you want - you may have your say on our Matrix room: https://matrix.to/#/#svmetasearch:noevil.pl. Despite vast messages in Polish most of room members can speak English (including myself, obviously).

Once again, thanks for the feedback!

I searched for a name. It autocorrected (a la "Results for ...") to a similar word, but did not show that anywhere (there was no "Results for..."), and there was no way to change that (enforce my literal search phrase).

Looking at the comments below this seems extremely untested.

What's different between this and SearXNG? What design goals are different?

Not much sadly. I tried it but got: Error! Engines cannot retrieve results. brave ( timeout ) qwant ( timeout ) wikidata ( timeout ) wikipedia ( timeout ) yahoo ( timeout ) Please, try again later.

Not sure if this is a bug or what, running the query "succulent plants" in the Brave browser, it shows an error message to one side,

Error! Engines cannot retrieve results:

brave ( Suspended: too many requests )

It gave me some results but also an error at the top:

“ Error! Engines cannot retrieve results: brave ( Suspended: too many requests )”

What does that mean?

Very slow.