SearXNG – a free internet metasearch engine

SearXNG is awesome. Between Google's search results degrading in quality, the pollution and manipulation of search results by advertisers and scammers, and the complete lack of concern for privacy that search engine providers seem to have (they seem to be adamantly anti-privacy, constantly haranguing people to log in), we could genuinely use options like SearXNG.

This is particularly important now that we're seeing regressive, backwards states in the US using data however they can to charge people with crimes for seeking abortions in states where it's legal. People should be more aware of where they search for anything that matters at all.

There are a few rough edges, though. One is that some of the search engines that SearXNG use by default don't like bots, so you have to visit them from the same IP as SearXNG uses now and then (simple using X11 over ssh or SOCKS over ssh). Another is that they, like many search engines these days, have no way to search for things that match exactly what you type and exclude everything that isn't exactly what you type. (if I put a phrase in quotes, for instance, I don't want to see any result that don't have that exact phrase in quotes).

I've been running one for quite a while now, and it has become my default go-to for searching. Now if I could just figure out how to get Safari to treat my SearXNG instance as the default search engine...

Highly recommended.