Hi, I think I’m looking for a unicorn. I would like to use a search engine that does not alter results based on things like location data harvested from my IP or prior search keywords, but that only responds to deliberate input from the user (keywords and syntax).

The reason is I find it very disturbing how people can be influenced by results that target them. This became a great concern in my mind when I first [made the mistake of] trying Tik Tok for the first time. Before it had collected any data from me, it was clear that my location and the interests of people in this area were strongly influencing results, with most of the content being of the radical alt-right variety. While results from a typical search engine may not be so dramatically skewed, it’s still troubling that we may be influenced in some way by results tailored to appeal to us or to other users in our households / locales.

So far, these are the ones I’ve tried (I won’t even mention search engines like Bing and Google, because … obviously):

1. Qwant: This was my first hope since it promotes itself as “the search engine that doesn’t know anything about you.” Upon searching “restaurants in my area,” this bold claim was immediately disproven.

2. Startpage: I used this for a long time before I noticed that results were being altered. It was subtle. While Startpage does not appear to use location information from my IP, I happened to search a specific address while in another town, and the day after this I started noticing results that heavily skewed toward that location, so apparently it does change search results based on which keywords you’ve searched before, which is just as troubling. Add to this the fact that they are suspect in the first place, being a System1 product, and it makes me feel ill at ease.

3. SearXNG: So I realize there’s a lot of customization one can do within SearXNG, but so far the public instances I’ve tried have all clearly netted results that are location-based.

4. Kagi: I can’t really afford to use this, but I had heard good things about it, so I tried the free trial. It was immediately giving me results based on my location. I’d say it was just as bad as mainline search engines such as Google and Bing.

5. DuckDuckGo HTML: This was my most recent attempt at finding a search engine. I knew from experience that standard DuckDuckGo changed results based on location, but I had read some information that led me to believe the HTML version does not. Unfortunately, it does.

Does anyone know of any search engine I can try that only nets results based on my input without trying to think for me? I’m exhausted lol

Edit: I just thought of this, and now I’m curious. I don’t know much about how Tor works, but do search engines with .onion URLs yield results from the general internet, or only .onion sites?

Edit 2: This is … extremely odd. Simplified explanation: Tor connects you via a specific circuit of nodes, which you can see by clicking an icon next to the address bar. The last node it connects to is the exit node. But here’s the thing: Even the Tor edition of DDG insists on providing location-biased results that match the location of the exit node. I tested this by running a search on DDG and then connecting via a different circuit several times. Each time, the results were tailored to the location of the exit node. This is very disappointing. I’m going to do some searching and try some different search engines, but I think it’s safe to say I will not find what I’m looking for in any fork of DuckDuckGo, not even the .onion version.

Edit 3: https://wiby.me/ This … might be it. This looks promising!

Edit 4: https://searxng.no-logs.com/ Another one, possibly? It appears to provide a lot of results around Stockholm though, so maybe it’s not totally location-neutral. It’s easy enough to trick a search engine into thinking you’re at another location if that’s the goal, but the goal here is authentic results.

Edit 5: Someone pointed out to me that https://www.mojeek.com/ has a setting to search with “no location bias,” and so far it appears it does not alter results based on location. I’m going to try this for a while.

  • confusedwiseman@beehaw.orgEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    I think Qwant is as close as you’re going to get unless you can set up searchxng to do what you are asking.

    Now, you might be able to get better diversity in results if you use a vpn to move to more diverse or contrasting cities.

    I often find news sources external to the US to be very interesting insights to what we see rammed down our throats.

    • LinkOpensChest.wav@lemmy.oneOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Qwant is actually one of the worst offenders, in my experience. It even serves the results in a Googlesque style, and there’s no setting to change this. It also requires you to at least select a country, and it has advertising baked in. (There are links to sites I’ve never visited like Nike and Rakuten on its homepage.) I’m very much anti-Qwant at this point, based on what I’ve seen. I’m not sure why people like it. Maybe it’s better for people who don’t use uBlock Origin? I don’t know. It’s honestly perplexing.

      It’s true that almost all of these will provide different results if I use a VPN, and I can and have, but then it’s the same problem – now I’m going to still see results targeted toward interests and agencies at that location instead of mine, which doesn’t really solve the problem of being manipulated by my own search engine. For instance, if I connect to Finland, I often receive actual results in Finnish from the search engines I’ve tested.

      I do agree with you though that it’s sometimes useful at least to use a VPN to see different results, and I also find this interesting, but this really only highlights the problem with location-altered searches.